Mapping genes is the first step to understanding an organism. Next comes learning the job of each gene.
The American food company Mars took the lead in paying for mapping the genes of the Forastero cocoa tree. The Forastero provides eighty to ninety percent of the world's cocoa beans. Mars depends on those beans for its M&Ms and other chocolate candies.
The company's research partners included several universities and the United States Department of Agriculture.
The average West African cocoa farmer produces about four hundred kilos of beans per hectare. But Howard-Yana Shapiro, head of plant science and external research at Mars, thinks that science could greatly increase the yield.
HOWARD-YANA SHAPIRO: "There's a yield potential of maybe four thousand kilos, ten times what the average is in West Africa."
A competitor of Mars, Hershey's, supported the gene mapping of the Criollo, a far less common cacao tree. Cirad, a French government research center, led scientists from six countries in creating that genome.
We'll talk more about the cocoa industry next week, when we look at efforts to help child laborers in Ivory Coast and Ghana.
And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson and Steve Baragona. You can read and listen to our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. And you can watch captioned videos on YouTube at VOA Learning English. I'm Bob Doughty.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25