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A new research project aimed at improving the quality and yields of cocoa
crops through a better understanding of the plant?s genetic make-up is being
undertaken by the UK?s University of Reading, August 2005 by Lorraine
Heller.

The project, a major five-year initiative, is being jointly funded by the
industry body Cocoa Research UK and the government of the Netherlands, a
nation with one of Europe's strongest cocoa processing traditions.

The ?1.4m grant will be used to study how the cocoa plant's genes are
influenced by the environment or by disease, with an aim of developing a
form of predictive science which could help growers in the face of possible
threats to the crop.

?Ideally we would be able to take a leaf from a plant and use it to
understand whether that plant will have a good yield, whether it is over or
under watered, or whether it is suffering from a disease for which it has
not yet shown any symptoms,? said Mike Wilkinson, professor of plant
genetics at Reading University.

?Cocoa is a commodity crop. People in the business like to know what yields
are likely to be, and so far the only way of knowing that is by counting the
pods. We hope to be able to improve on that,? he added.

The ultimate goal would be to ensure a continuous supply of cocoa, something
that could result in less price fluctuations.

However, Bob Eagle, secretary of Cocoa Research UK, said regulating cocoa
prices was not a direct aim.

?Prices are only partly determined by crop yield and quality, which is often
affected by disease or climate change. We can try to deal with these by
improving our level of basic understanding, but prices are also determined
by politics, which we can do nothing about,? said Eagle.

The research has as its core an understanding of the way cocoa plant genes
react in order to cope with certain stresses. This would allow precautionary
measures to be taken in order to offset the negative effects of these.

?We hope to be able to identify where a tree is susceptible to change, and
where it can't cope. Then we either advise growers how to keep the
environment within the limits that the plant likes to be in, or we target
breeding in order to produce more resistant varieties,? Professor Wilkinson
told ConfectioneryNews.com.

He stressed that breeding would not be genetically modified, but ?working
with what the tree already has.?

[www.foodnavigator-usa.com]


Prof. Dr. Manfred Raupp

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