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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.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 03 2018, @05:24PM
There are multiple problems, and a big one is politics:
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.
🌻🌻 [google.com]