SUMMARYDifferences in amounts of infection following seed inoculation, by the mealybug vector (Planococcoides njalensis(Laing)) of cocoa swollen‐shoot virus were used as a short‐term test of virus resistance in a range of cocoa progenies. The test results were highly correlated with virus resistance as measured in field trials. The best assessment of seed inoculation experiments allowed for progeny‐dependent variation in the latent period of the virus. Experiments in which estimates of progeny means varied significantly with replicate sometimes gave poor agreement with known field perfor