Chocolate could reportedly vanish as early as 2050. This revelation has led scientists from the University of California at Berkeley to work with Virginia-based manufacturer Mars, Incorporated to save the cacao plant from disappearing. Warmer temperatures and drier weather conditions are expected to be the root of the cacao plants' potential disappearance, according to Business Insider. New technology, known as CRISPR, is being used by UC Berkeley scientists to modify the DNA of the plants. The crop's tiny seedlings would be able to survive in different climates if the experiment is proven successful. Cacao plants originated millions of years ago in South America. The crop is only capable of growing in the lower story of the evergreen rainforest, where warm temperatures and rainfall are plentiful. It's also frequently victim to fungal disease and climate change. More than half of the world's chocolate now comes from two countries in West Africa, being Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. However, these regions will soon become an unsuitable host environment for the cacao plant...more
4 comments:
Chocolate - can take it or leave it.
...if it disappears I'll no longer have to listen to Chocolate snobs telling me I need to get used to the dark 70% cocoa because the milk chocolate is "the cheap stuff".
Then they'll go on to complain about the price of milk.
The reason there is no longer cacao production in South America is because of the disease called witches’-broom. It has nothing to do with the climate change, the jungles of Brazil still are perfect for this use. But the disease devastated the industry. We did some work 15 years ago with a product which promotes the plants immune system, it’s used in spinach and others to help fend off the effects of the disease, but at dosages sufficient to provide efficacy, it turns the nibs a darker color than normal—a lot darker—unmarketably dark. The program died, as did the Cacao trees. The production was already moving heavy into Central Africa because one, it was subsidized by the governments there, and two; there's no witches’-broom yet. Sorry climate guys, this started a simple economics, and mother nature’s disease finished it off in America. And since when is investors daily a source for agricultural science?
The article, in the International Business Times, has a link to the American Phytopathological Society, which provides a complete rundown of the fungal diseases affecting the cacao plant, including witches' broom.
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