Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Climate change is stressing rainforests where the highly sensitive cocoa bean grows, but chocolate lovers need not despair, say companies that are researching other ways to grow cocoa or develop ...
But reports of a weaker-than-expected crop set off concerns about supply, sparking the commodity’s run-up in recent months. Cocoa hit an all-time high of more than $11,000 per metric ton in April.
Just days after Israel's agriculture research centre, the Volcani Institute, sent 140 seedlings to a facility in southern Israel to study how this tropical plant could be grown in dry conditions ...
Cocoa beans and cocoa harvest processing. Ghana's cocoa production grew an average of 16 per cent between 2000 and 2003. [18] Cocoa has a long production cycle, far longer than many other tropical crops, and new hybrid varieties need over five years to come into production, and a further 10 to 15 years for the tree to reach its full bearing potential.
The crop is grown in Ivory Coast mostly by smallholder farmers planting on 1 to 3 hectares. [10] The pods containing the beans are harvested when a sufficient number are ripe, opened to separate the seeds and pulp from the outer rind, and the seeds and pulp are usually allowed to ferment somewhere on the farm, before the seeds are dried in a central location.
Phytophthora megakarya is an oomycete plant pathogen that causes black pod disease in cocoa trees in west and central Africa. [1] This pathogen can cause detrimental loss of yield in the economically important cocoa industry, worth approximately $70 billion annually. [2]
The trees that grow the beans need specific conditions. They can only thrive about 20 degrees north and south of the Earth’s equator, in high humidity and the tropical conditions of the rainforests.
Black pod disease is a fungal disease of Cocoa trees. It is mostly found in tropical areas where cocao trees grow, and its spores are spread via the heavy rainfalls that can occur in tropical climates. Annually, the pathogen can cause a yield loss of up to 1/3, and up to 10% of total trees can be lost completely.