pg.3
-Swedish Botanist names Cacao bean Theobroma:Elixer of the gods
-Chocolate is 60 million industry
-laborers from euatorial jungle picked pods pg.4 -chocolate has been around for 5 centuries pg.6 -In one year the world can produce 3,000,000,000 tons of cocoa beans
-much about cocoa remains a mystery
-Young trees of theobroma seek dank shadows of tall tropical hardwoods but older like more sun
-grow in only 20 degrees of the equator but can climb mountain sides as high as 2,000 ft
-and demand a long rainy season, w/ deep rich soil and temp. that never drops 60 degrees pg.7 -the bark of the tree is very tough
-max age of tree is forty years
-color of pods are brilliant colors of purple green yellow and red
-blossom from white flower
-4 or 5 in a hundred trasform over three months into oval pods no bigger than a pineapple
-each pod has a husk inside to protect around 40 bean inside, which are also in a sticky whit pulp
-pods do not fall they must be transported by by bird animal or human to produce more plants
-use lethal hooks on poles and use machettes or clubs to open the pods but carful to not damage the beans
-the gooey mass must ferment away from outdoors air to drain away any mucilage and dry
-the fermentation unlocks the favors of the bean pg 8
-dispatched to europe and north america
-other insects and diseases cankill the trees or destroy their pods (1989 plague of withces-broom almost drove brazil out of business with cocoa)
-by the time cortes discovered the axtecs cachuatal anthropologists say earlier inhabitants of the americas had been drinking it for a thousand years
-what the spaniards found wasa domesticated variety of Theobroma cacao known as criollo-native to cetral and south america
-criollo have pure white aromatic beans but grows few pods and only under highly specific conditions will it grow and is ver susceptible to pests+ disease
-the new