Chocolove Premium Chocolate Collaborating with USDA on Cacao Research Project
Collaborative efforts will focus on the identification and acquisition of accessions with promising traits, such as disease resistance, productivity, and unique chocolate flavors.
29/08/08 Chocolove is proud to announce its support of a collaborative project aimed at the identification, acquisition, characterization and preservation of important cacao genetic resources. The project, led by Dr. Brian Irish, at the USDA ARS Tropical Agricultural Research Station in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico is entitled 'Cacao Germplasm Evaluation and Characterization'.
The current collection has been assembled with cacao plant materials or 'accessions' that have been acquired over the past 70 years and come from wild selections and breeding programs around the world. Collaborative efforts will focus on the identification and acquisition of accessions with promising traits, such as disease resistance, productivity, and unique chocolate flavors.
In progress, in the recently re-established field plots, is the collection of field data that focuses on the characterization of traits of importance such as yield and disease resistance, among others. In the laboratory, DNA fingerprinting has been completed on all of the currently maintained accessions, so that the true identity of each plant can be determined. By identifying and cataloguing each cacao plant's DNA fingerprint, Dr. Irish hopes to eliminate redundancy in accessions, estimate how genetically diverse the current collection holdings are, and identify and add unique cacao types that might not be already present.
Chocolove's owner and chocolatier, Timothy Moley, has been chosen to participate in a professional panel of experts who taste the chocolate made from the different cacao accessions being evaluated at Tropical Agriculture Research Station. Cacao beans are harvested from each individual plant and made into small batches of single-accession chocolate. In tasting this special chocolate, Mr. Moley looks for unique flavor nuances that differentiate the cacao accessions from each other. This aspect of the project aims to provide a flavor and aroma profile for each of the accessions.
Mr. Moley says, "I am excited and proud to give my financial assistance and professional expertise to the USDA ARS Tropical Agriculture Research Station and this project. I think that a major disease epidemic somewhere in the world cacao crop is inevitable. A genetically diverse collection of cacao plants will be invaluable to re-establishing a hardy, flavorful cacao crop and will prevent great hardship for cacao farmers in the affected region. The 'Cacao Germplasm Evaluation and Characterization Project' will also create an opportunity to reintroduce unique heirloom varieties of cacao to the market that may otherwise have been lost. I am happy to be supporting this living 'seed bank' of cacao plants."
