theobroma cacao
TRANSCRIPT
Theobroma Cacao
The Tree of the Gods
Michael Clymer
It is the million dollar tree. What tree you may ask? It is Theobroma
Cacao or the Cacao Tree is a tropical grown tree that is what chocolate is
made out of. Yet chocolate does not come from the tree itself. The chocolate
that the world devours daily is a by-product of the cacao beans, grown within
the pod of Theobroma Cacao.
Cacao has been grown in the understory of the rainforest in the
northern part of the Amazon Basin. It thrived there because of the shade on
the forest floor and lived on the water and nutrients passed down from the
canopy above where the taller trees grow. Theobroma Cacao is native to
what is now Venezuela. But that is the past and in the future, as in these
days, the tree grows in low land tropical forests. The best climate for the tree
to grow is that there is a constant temperature at around 69.8° and 89.6°
Fahrenheit. But not only that, the climate temperature must never go below
59°F for the Cacao tree to survive.
Not only is there a temperature for to tree to grow but there are also
optimal elevation heights that must be maintained for the tree to grow as
well. Cacao as a tree cannot grow above 3,280 feet and most of the time
Cacao grows under 984 feet. This is a tree that must have quite a bit of
water yearly. Cacao must have 39.4-98.4 inches of rainfall throughout the
year. The rainfall must distribute well so that not all of the rain comes at
once. There also has to be no less than 3.9 inches of rainfall per month.
Because of this it may seem like there are only a few places in the world for
Cacao to grow but in fact there are many.
Cacao grows all over the world, yet more so in some places than
others. For example, the largest amounts of species are found in the
northwestern part of South America. But to contradict that, over half of the
supply of commercially grown Cacao world-wide comes from two East African
countries. One being the Ivory Coast, exporting 45%. The other, the Ivory
Coast’s neighbor, Ghana, exporting 13%. While Africa is growing their
amount, Indonesia comes in third in world exports, exporting 11%. Brazil,
Ecuador, Cameroon, Nigeria, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela all
export significant amounts of the world’s supply of Cacao. Other exporters of
Cacao are, Columbia, the Congo/Zaire, Cuba, Costa Rica, Fiji, the Dominican
Republic, Grenada, Gabon, Haiti, Jamaica, Malaysia, Panama, south-central
Mexico, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Peru, Sau Taune, Sierra Leone,
Togo, Western Samoa, and Trinidad. So as it is simple to see, Cacao is grown
everywhere, and it is a good thing too, because two billion pounds of
chocolate is produced every year.
There are three main classifications of the Theobroma Cacao. There is
the Criollo (cree-YO-yo), the Forastero, and the Trinitario. The Criollo produce
the best quality pods of the three, but the downside is that Criollo is more
prone to disease. It also produces fewer Cacao pods per year. The Forastero
is more resistant to disease compared to the Criollo and yields a higher crop
count. Forastero produced 80% of the world’s crop of Cacao. Trinitario is a
natural hybrid of Criollo and Forastero. It is named after Trinidad where it
originated. Since it is a hybrid of the two it shares qualities of both the
Forastero and the Criollo. The Trinitario produces 10% of the world’s supply.
The Cacao tree can live up to one hundred years though the
cultivated trees are considered economically productive for only sixty years.
When the tree is grown naturally from a seed or bean it has a six-seven foot
taproot. But with cultivation, most of the worlds Cacao plantations use
cuttings or vegetative reproduction, which results in a tree with no taproot.
The leaves on the Cacao tree are almost six inches in length and are
just over three inches wide. Young leaves are reddish in color. The leaves
being red make the younger, newer leaves less affected by the intense sun.
The new leaves hang vertically too, to also help minimize damage from the
sun. The leaves are oblong in shape and are attached to the trunk closer to
the ground and on the branches as the tree grow taller.
There are different ways for the Cacao to reproduce. A
few that happen naturally in the wild and others that take place on
plantations. On Cacao plantations there are two main ways to reproduce the
Cacao tree. The first is to harvest the pods and sow the beans or seeds. The
only problem with this is that there are then less Cacao beans to dry and sell
to chocolate manufacturers. Another problem with naturally sowing the
seeds is that on many plantations around the world, the farmers grow
multiple types of Cacao. The problem is there is a chance that the pollen of
one species accidently fertilizes the blossoms on a different species of tree.
This could potentially be problematic because then there would be a mix of
both trees.
The second way on plantations is to graft. A bud is taken from one tree
and stuck into an eighteen inch tree that is serving as the host. It takes a
month or so to see if the bud has been compatible with the host tree. If so, it
is a newly fertilized tree, so five to six months later the new tree is ready to
plant and grow. There are a few ways for new trees to grow in the wild.
Technically this is not growing but pollination. Mainly there is one type of
animal that pollinates the Cacao tree. It is the Forcipomyiinae Midge. It is in a
family of biting midges but only the female’s drink blood, so it is an
omnivorous insect. Without the Forcipomyiinae Midges there would be no
chocolate at all. The flowers are usually pollinated in the morning. The
midges must do it fast, because in twenty-four hours the flowers will die if
not pollinated. Hurry up midges we want our chocolate!!
The way that new trees are grown in the wild is by the spreading of the
beans by some of the local animals. Mainly that animal is the Capuchin
Monkey. The way that this happens is that the Capuchin Monkey breaks open
the husk or outer shell of the Cacao pod and eats the pulp that surrounds the
beans on the inside of the pod. The pulp is completely edible and is said to
resemble the consistency of an apple and the taste to be lemony or like a
mango. It then spreads all of the seeds around the jungle allowing more
trees to grow. This is called symbiosis.
Symbiosis is when two organisms coexist with each other or,
sometimes at least, because there are three different main types of
symbiosis. There is mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism. Mutualism is
where both organisms benefit, commensalism is one organism benefits, but
the other does not get hurt, and parasitism is where one organism benefits,
while the other gets hurt of killed.
The symbiosis between the Cacao tree and the Capuchin Monkey is a
simple yet effective one. All that is happening between the two is that the
Capuchin is getting food and the Cacao is spreading its seed and therefore
reproducing. This is just one example of the many different symbiosis
partners out there in the world.
There are many different subspecies of Capuchin Monkey. Some of
them are: the Golden-Bellied Capuchin, the Tufted Capuchin, the White-
Fronted Capuchin, the Black Capuchin, the Black-Striped Capuchin, the Blond
Capuchin, the Kaapori Capuchin, the Large-Headed Capuchin, and the
Weeper Capuchin. These are most of the Capuchin subspecies, but there are
most likely more to discover.
There are ways that the Cacao tree protects itself,
whether it is by human means or how it has formed over the many hundreds
of years it has been here. This year two different teams of scientists are
taking the genetics of the Cacao tree. They are trying to make it so that the
Cacao tree is to become more resistant to diseases in the future. This
experiment was started in early September so there have been no updates
to how the research is progressing. Though while the scientists are working
on that, the Cacao tree has something that helps it already. Wild grown
Cacao trees have a really deep root system compared to most tropical trees.
This is because it lives in the riparian zone. A riparian zone is the interface
between a river or stream and land. The Cacao tree has these roots in the
riparian zone so that it can reach that water. Protection is vital to anything in
the wild so that it can survive, this is the Cacao trees way.
There are so many amazing and interesting facts about the Cacao tree.
Some of the most amazing are that Cacao leaves can move a full 90° from
vertical to horizontal and back again. The leaves do that so that the sun can
hit the leaves better and so that the bigger leaves can protect the smaller
younger ones too. This is possible because of a small node at the base of the
leaves. The node stiffens and UN-stiffens with temperature change. Cacao
has been cultivated for almost 3,000 years, and in ancient Mayan days the
beverage that the tribe traditionally made of Cacao was only for men to drink
because it was believed to be toxic to women and children. The scientific
name for Cacao is Theobroma Cacao. There are many debates about who
first named Cacao. But it is known that it comes from Theo meaning ‘god or
gods’ and broma meaning ‘food’. Put together it means ‘food of the gods” of
more literally ‘god food’. Another fact about Cacao is that the tree is grown
in a band 20° north and south of the equator. See, some might think of
Cacao as just a tree, but first of all it supplies everyone one of the most
consumed of sweet treats around, and second it is so very interesting to
learn about.
Chocolate, some might be saying I want to know about chocolate! Well
here you go. As one should know by now, chocolate is made out of the beans
of the Cacao tree that grow within the pods. But this is how it is to become
the creamy goodness we all know and love.
Chocolate is not an overnight process. To be precise just growing the
pods takes around five months. And then after that there are only twenty-
fifty beans in each pod, and it takes roughly twenty-twenty-five PODS to
produce a small amount of two-point-two pounds of raw cacao. When the
pods are first picked off of the tree, the beans are bitter and not at all good,
so all of the beans have to be fermented. Then after fermentation the beans
are dried and sent to a manufacturer. There the beans are roasted and the
shell is removed to produce what is commonly known as the ‘cacao nib’. This
is what is ground up to make what is referred to as ‘cocoa mass’. It is usually
liquefied and is therefore referred to as ‘chocolate liquor’. This is what is
mixed with different ingredients to create either bitter baking chocolate, or
the sweet chocolate that we consume. Most of the times this is what the
general ingredients for different types of chocolate:
Dark
Chocolat
e
Sugar Cocoa
Butter
Cocoa
Liquor
Vanilla
(Sometim
es)
White
Chocolat
e
Sugar Cocoa
Butter
Milk Vanilla
Milk
Chocolat
e
Sugar Cocoa
Butter
Cocoa
Liquor
Milk Vanilla
Some people might want to just look at chocolate, but remember, also
think about the Cacao tree because without that there would be no
chocolate. Just because it is a tree doesn’t mean it isn’t special. So hooray to
chocolate, but hip, hip, hooray to Theobroma Cacao, the Tree of the gods.
Works Cited
"All about Chocolate -- History." All about Chocolate -- Www.xocoatl.org --
Mrk.'s Chocolate Site. Web. 22 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.xocoatl.org/history.htm>.
"All about Chocolate -- the Cacao Tree." All about Chocolate --
Www.xocoatl.org -- Mrk.'s Chocolate Site. Web. 18 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.xocoatl.org/tree.htm>.
Ehrenberg, Rachel. "A Taste of the Chocolate Genome." Science News 15
Sept. 2010. Science News. 15 Sept. 2010. Web. 26 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/63417/title/A_taste_of_th
e_chocolate_genome>.
"Growing Cocoa." This and That. Web. 18 Sept. 2010.
<http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/test7.html>.