Whether you’re shopping for hot chocolate mixes or browsing the candy aisle for a sweet treat, you’re almost guaranteed to see "cocoa" or "cacao" on a few product labels. Perhaps curiosity got the ...

Climate change is increasing pressure on farmers around the world as rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, and ...

Archaeologists have shed light on the origins of chocolate by tracing the spread of the cacao tree. A new study published in Scientific Reports found that the cacao tree, which grows cocoa beans, ...

Cocoa comes from the Theobroma cacao tree, which forms the basis of a multibillion-dollar U.S. chocolate industry. The seeds are processed into cocoa beans that are the source of cocoa, cocoa butter ...

Researchers are racing to fortify the embattled cacao tree and to meet increasing demand for cocoa made from its seeds To the ancient Mayans, it was the food of the gods. Nineteenth-century Cubans ...

Moniliophthora roreri is a basidiomycete fungus that causes frosty pod rot disease, one of the most serious problems for cacao production in Latin America. “This fungus is phenomenally unusual – it ...

The production of high quality chocolate, and the farmers who grow it, will benefit from the recent sequencing and assembly of the chocolate tree genome. The production of high quality chocolate, and ...

Gardeners who love chocolate may want to grow cacao and make their own chocolate. Cacao trees grow well here in Hawaii and with room for a small tree where it can have a shady overstory, it’s worth ...

Chocolate comes from the tropical cacao tree. The cacao bean, the rawest form of chocolate, can be harvested and consumed directly (cacao), roasted and turned into powder (cocoa) or made into ...

Service (USDA-ARS), and IBM this week sequenced the genome of the cacao tree. Best of all, the whole genome sequence is being released in the public domain, so companies can’t patent cacao strains a ...