14 DAY TRIAL // An international team of researchers announces the sequencing and assembly of the first ever chocolate tree genome. The achievement is bound to help with increasing the production of high quality cocoa for even finer chocolate, and also with raising the life standard of farmers who grow these trees.
At this point, it has become common practice for cocoa tree farmers to select species of inferior quality for their plantations, given that they are a lot more resilient to a variety of diseases.
However, consumers continuously demand better, finer chocolate and also more intense dark chocolate, which sports an increased cocoa content. In the latter products, the specific taste of low quality cocoa is immediately felt.
The best variety of cocoa is obtained from the tree species called Theobroma. Members of it, including the Criollo tree, have been domesticated for over 3,000 years. The Mayans have the first accounts of using this tree for chocolate production.
In fact, Criollo is one of the oldest domesticated tree crops in the world. However, it can be susceptible to many diseases, and can therefore produce small yields in years when various plagues roam the farmlands.
“Fine cocoa production is estimated to be less than 5 percent of the world cocoa production because of low productivity and disease susceptibility,” explains Mark Guiltinan.
The expert holds an appointment as a professor of plant molecular biology at the Pennsylvania State University. He was also the co-leader of the international effort, alongside French researcher Claire Lanaud, who is based at CIRAD agricultural research center.
Details of the investigation were published in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Nature Genetics, Science Blog reports.
“Consumers have shown an increased interest for high-quality chocolate made with cocoa of good quality and for dark chocolate, containing a higher percentage of cocoa, while also taking into account environmental and ethical criteria for cocoa production,” the team writes in the paper.
With the publishing of the cocoa tree genome, experts also highlighted several genes that, once modified, may contribute to making cocoa trees and fruits more resilient to infections, and also more productive over the same planted surface.
“Our analysis of the Criollo genome has uncovered the genetic basis of pathways leading to the most important quality traits of chocolate – oil, flavonoid and terpene biosynthesis,” says Siela Maximova.
“It has also led to the discovery of hundreds of genes potentially involved in pathogen resistance, all of which can be used to accelerate the development of elite varieties of cacao in the future,” adds the expert.
Maximova is an associate professor of horticulture at Penn State, and was also a member of the team that conducted the research. Experts from 18 institutions around the world were also involved.