Cocoa Tree

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About Cocoa Tree:

It is an important plantation crop grown for chocolates around the world. It is known as a crop of humid tropics and is native to the Amazon basin of South America.
Cocoa trees grow about 20 degree snorth and south of the equator in regions with warm weather and abundant rain, including West Africa and South America.
Required climatic conditions:
- It can be grown up to 300 m above mean sea level.
- Rainfall: It requires an annual rainfall of 1500-2000 mm.
- Temperature: The temperature range of 15°-39°C with optimum of 25°C is considered ideal.
- Soil: It requires deep and well drained soils. Majority of area under Cocoa cultivation is on clay loam and sandy loam soil.
- It grows well in the pH range of 6.5 to 7.0.
Shade requirement: It was evolved as an under-storey crop in the Amazonian forests. Thus commercial cultivation of cocoa can be taken up in plantations where 50 per cent of light is ideally available.
Major producing regions in the world: About 70 percent of the world’s cocoa beans come from four West African countries: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon.
In India, it is mainly cultivated in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu mainly as intercrop with Arecanut and Coconut.

Q1: What are Plantation crops?

These are defined as a group of commercial crops perennial in nature, cultivated extensively in tropical and subtropical situations in a large and contiguous areas. They include coconut, areca nut, oil palm, cocoa, cashew nut, tea, coffee and rubber.

Source: Will chocolate’s future hinge on success of growing cocoa in the lab?