Resumen de Lust for chocolate has fatally weakened the tree
The world loves chocolate, but thousands of years of selective breeding have drastically changed the genome of cocoa trees. The plants now produce tastier chocolate, but they also make less of it due to harmful mutations that are putting the future of our chocolate supply at risk. To understand what is happening, a team led by Juan Motamayor, a geneticist at chocolate maker Mars, has now sequenced 200 genomes of domestic and wild trees. It is the first study of cocoa on such a scale. The team found mutations that compromise productivity in many trees from different populations. These mutations were particularly pronounced in a rare kind of cocoa bean called Criollo, which has a nutty flavor and is used to make some of the most expensive chocolate.
