Keep the Chocolate Coming....
Good news for us chocoholics.....
Chocolate consumers will benefit from a research project in Britain aimed at improving cocoa production and tackling pests and diseases which wipe out up to one third of the world crop each year.
The Dutch government and a UK-based industry body have donated 1.4 million euros to the world's first ever study of cocoa epigenetics -- how the environment influences the plant's genes and how this changes over a tree's lifetime and under the effects of stresses such as disease and drought.
The University of Reading's School of Plant Sciences in the UK's south-east will use the money over five years to research the effects of changed growing conditions on genes for quality, yield and disease resistance to learn how to predict plants' adaptability to environmental change.
The research "will enable us to be more predictive about trees acting in certain places,"
Reading's Professor Mike Wilkinson said. "If we know which genes can adapt we can also say something about the physiological state of the plant, so that we can detect the symptoms of some diseases early on."
Most cocoa is grown in a narrow belt either side of the equator in West Africa, South America and Asia. - Reuters
Chocolate at the Exploratorium
Chocolate The Exhibition
Chocolat (the movie)
Like Water for Chocolate (the movie)
Some of my favorite chocolates:
Barry Callebaut
Ghiradelli
Valrhona
Scharffen Berger (which has been purchased by Hershey...)
and how can you resist Mega M&M's
I read about this on Yahoo. Great news! Now if they could just make it calorie free hee hee!
Posted by
Joe |
Thu Aug 11, 08:26:00 PM