Sweet Science

Government scientists, with financial backing from Mars, Inc., are taking the first steps in a five-year journey to map the genome of perhaps the most-loved plant on the planet: the cocoa bean.

The project is a peculiar one, especially in light of the scientific community’s usual emphasis on mapping the human genome and other biological entities that seem…well…more important than the cocoa bean.

The end- goal of the project is to more effectively combat crop diseases in the cocoa.

Though virtually no cocoa is harvested in the U.S., crop diseases account for an annual $700 million in global losses for cocoa farmers. Domestic farmers who grow things like almonds and raisins depend a great deal on chocolate, so the belief is that the project should eventually yield positive results for many different types of farmers in many different countries.

Another welcomed result of the project may also be that producers will be able to make better tasting chocolate products, an idea that most anyone could get excited about.

The scientists’ first step is to catalog the entirety of the more than 400 million parts of the cocoa genome. Next, they will be able to concentrate on the parts of the double-helix that are of particular interest and importance to farmers and candy producers alike.

Although Mars Inc., the makers of M&M’s and Snickers candies, are footing the bill for the research, the results will be made public, even to the company’s competitors.

"For us, the fact that Hershey has similar information that every other chocolate company in the world has, that's fine," said Howard-Yana Shapiro, Mars' global director of plant science.

The belief is that there will be too much information for any one company to catalog and effectively analyze anyway.

Shapiro said he did not expect improvements in yields from research would lead to larger overall cocoa crops, but did say that higher yields would allow farmers to devote some of their land to other lucrative crops that could make them more money. This coupled with the potential for better tasting chocolate products could make for a sweet future for chocolate lovers the world over.