Theobroma cacao is mainly cultivated by small growers, especially in the main production area in West Africa. The sustainability of cocoa cultivation will be improved if farmers have access to new planting material with improved agronomic traits such as yield, vigour, pest, and disease resistance. Progress in breeding programmes to accumulate favourable alleles for these traits can be accelerated using molecular marker techniques which allow more direct access to the genome. The technology has developed rapidly and over the fast ten years studies have been carried out to map QTLs for agronomic traits in several plant species. In cocoa, a number of progenies have been mapped and several QTL related to resistance to Phytophthora spp. and to yield components have been detected. The comparison of the different linkage maps of cocoa is possible through specific markers (RFLP and microsatellites) mapped on to a reference map containing 473 markers. The purpose of this paper is to analyse available results on the detection of QTL for yield and vigour traits and the co-location of the QTL identified in different parental genotypes. Methodological approaches to the detection of QTL are also presented. Perspectives for further research on mapping of yield and vigour traits and the possible use of molecular markers in the selection for these traits in cocoa are discussed.