This 'n That Thursdays: Will Chocolate Go Extinct?

From Concept News Central

Please say it isn't so!  According to an article in Business Insider there is a good chance that suitable habitat for cacao plants will all but disappear by the year 2050, thanks to increasing temperatures and drier weather conditions.  Cacao trees only grow in rain forests within a limited latitudinal range, and most of the world's chocolate comes from just two African countries, Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, which could no longer be suitable for cacao plants in just a few decades.  The trees may be able to grow at much higher elevations, but just imagine the impossibility of land owners trying to move their cacao plantations to land that they do not own, or the lag time needed to clear and prepare new land as well as get plants established and producing, not to mention the negative ecological impacts of such a move!

This dire prediction has worried chocolate producer Mars, Incorporated (maker of Snickers bars and M&Ms) enough that they are now in collaboration with scientists from The University of California Berkeley attempting to develop hardier cacao plants that will be able to survive future hotter and drier conditions in current plantation locations.  The company is investing $1 billion in a variety of ways to decrease their carbon footprint.  If the Berkeley scientists are successful in developing a hardier cacao tree, there will be no need to consider moving cacao plantations to land currently being used mainly for wildlife preservation.  New technology called CRISPR, known primarily for its potential to eliminate genetic diseases, is being used to genetically tweak the DNA of cacao plants (see a more simplified explanation of CRISPR here).

Basically, CRISPR is a form of genetic editing rather than genetic modification.  This technology has led to a whole new set of questions over the safety and advisability of tinkering with DNA, whether in humans or food crops, so even if it is possible to develop altered cacao plants it may be difficult to get growers and consumers to accept them.  As if the world does not have enough problems, now we have to worry about the possibility that one of our favorite comfort foods may be doomed to disappear!

Pod-laden cacao trees (from Confectionery News).