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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 03 2018, @05:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the CRISPR-chocolate dept.

If you can't maintain a viable habitat for cacao trees in the wild, maybe you can genetically design them to survive the world that's coming?

Scientists forecast that reduced humidity, caused by rising temperatures, will make cacao trees extremely vulnerable by 2050, threatening the chocolate industry. Luckily for cacao farmers and chocolate fiends, researchers are attempting to save the bean-like seeds with CRISPR, the same gene-editing technology associated with creating “designer babies,” eradicating diseases, and bringing back the wooly mammoth.

According to a report published Sunday by Business Insider, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and the global confectionary company Mars are collaborating to create cacao plants that can survive in warmer temperatures and drier conditions. Scientists at the university’s Innovative Genomics Institute are using CRISPR to enable them to grow in different elevations while being disease-resistant.

[...] This project is a part of Mars’s larger initiative, a $1 billion pledge to reduce the carbon footprint of its business and increase the sustainability of the crops used in its products. In 2008, Mars launched the Cacao Genome Project, an effort to publicly release the sequence of the cacao gene so breeders could “begin identifying traits of climate change adaptability, enhanced yield, and efficiency in water and nutrient use.”

Yay, open source - does this mean we're going to get designer chocolates with extra good stuff grown right in at the source? Chocolate Kingdom grows a few specimen cacao trees indoors in Orlando. They're a little on the tall side for commercial indoor cultivation, but maybe if they're putting out high quality theobromine and similar goodies, it might make commercial sense.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Wednesday January 03 2018, @07:47AM (5 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday January 03 2018, @07:47AM (#617093) Homepage Journal

    As always, TFA has to mention "climate change". But the real problem is much simpler, and more obvious: crappy agricultural practices destroying the very crop the farmers are trying to cultivate. Just one example: Cocoa trees cannot function in a monoculture, because they are happiest in light shade, meaning growing in and amongst some other trees that like full sun. So you have uneducated farmers figuring "more is better", and replacing surrounding trees with more cocoa. Over time, as the canopy disappears, the cocoa trees get sickly and stop producing. The thing is: this plays out over years, because cocoa trees have to be about 5 years old before they are really producing.

    It's a classic problem that you see all over Africa, just like the overgrazing that is causing desertification. This is even a problem in stable, relatively prosperous countries like Ghana, where one would hope for better long-term planning. So what are companies like Mars supposed to do? What they undoubtedly would like to do is move in, and set up their own agricultural operations. Take control of the supply, and manage it themselves. But that would reek of colonialism, and is politically impossible. So they cast this in terms of "climate change" to win political points (and possibly government subsidies), and try to create cocoa plants that can better survive poor agricultural practices. Really, it's a clever move on their part.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 03 2018, @09:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 03 2018, @09:17AM (#617104)

    This isn't the only crop that is seeing negative effects due to manmade climate disruption.
    Traditional growing zones for crops are shifting toward the poles. [google.com]

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 03 2018, @10:55AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 03 2018, @10:55AM (#617122)

    Wouldn't artificial sources of shade work too? e.g. stick poles up with mesh/netting, remove when the cocoa plants get big enough to not need shade (apparently the big ones don't need shade).

    http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/ad220e/AD220E03.htm [fao.org]

    When the cocoa trees have grown taller, they need less shade.
    You should gradually give them less and less shade.
    You should prune the big trees and cut off those branches that cast too much shade.
    When the plantation is well cared for, you can cut down all the big trees.

    But bananas and other crops can make more money than artificial sources of shade :).

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 03 2018, @02:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 03 2018, @02:19PM (#617155)

      > stick poles up with mesh/netting,

      Stick up poles with solar panels...

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 03 2018, @04:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 03 2018, @04:39PM (#617201)

      Apparently it is often found near cacao plants and provides the partial shade they look for.

      As stated they are also tropical plants however, and there are no cacao plants that currently survive below ~50 degrees F. One of the more interesting things you will notice looking into plant habitability ranges is that most plants cluster around specific temperature 'death regions', Usually 0F,32F, 50F, 7xF, 110F+, with a few plants that can survive well into the negatives or triple digits, but usually by going dormant.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 03 2018, @05:24PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday January 03 2018, @05:24PM (#617225)

    There are multiple problems, and a big one is politics:

    Over half of the world's chocolate now comes from just two countries in West Africa — Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.

    With most of the supply wrapped up in impoverished and unstable political regimes, of course there are going to be challenges in "doing it right."

    However, if politics and short sighted farming practices weren't enough, climate change does seem set to push cacao over the proverbial edge. I, for one, welcome a modified Pecan tree that produces all the goodness of Cacao beans in its nuts, but thrives in my local climate. Whether you get there by moving Cacao protein synthesis processes into the Pecan, or Pecan structural growth attributes into the Cacao, I don't really care... it will be a long time in development, but I think it's worth the effort.

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