26 Oct 2024        14:15:39 pm

Environmental Ecology

Cocoa Tree

Tags : Cocoa Tree

Topic: Biodiversity

Why in the news?

• Scientists and entrepreneurs are working on ways to make more cocoa that stretch well beyond the tropics, from Northern California to Israel.
• California Cultured, a plant cell culture company, is growing cocoa from cell cultures at a facility in West Sacramento, California. It puts cocoa bean cells in a vat with sugar water so they reproduce quickly and reach maturity in a week rather than the six to eight months a traditional harvest takes. The process also no longer requires as much water or arduous labour.

Source: The Hindu 

About Cocoa Tree: 

• It is an important plantation crop grown for chocolates around the world. 
• It is known as a crop of humid tropics and is native to the Amazon basin of South America.
• It grows about 20 degrees north and south of the equator in regions with warm weather and abundant rain, including West Africa and South America. 
• Climatic conditions:
  • It can be grown up to 300 m above mean sea level. 
  • It requires an annual rainfall of 1500-2000 mm.
  • The temperature range of 15°-39°C with optimum of 25°C is considered ideal.
  • It requires deep and well drained soils. Majority of area under its cultivation is on clay loam and sandy loam soil.
• It grows well in the pH range of 6.5 to 7.0.
• It evolved as an under-storey crop in the Amazonian forests. Thus commercial cultivation of cocoa can be taken up in plantations where 50 per cent of light is ideally available. 
• About 70 percent of the world’s cocoa beans come from four West African countries: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon.
• In India, it is mainly cultivated in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu mainly as intercrop with Arecanut and Coconut.

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