With global appetite for chocolate reaching unprecedented levels, and real fears that growers will fail to keep up with demand, hope for the future is turning to three previously unknown members – and other wild relatives – of the cocoa genus Theobroma.
*Research into these recently described species is just one in a series of breakthroughs by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and its international partners over the last 12 months.
In all, collaborations have resulted in 23 new species from 13 countries, ranging from Colombia to India and Indonesia. They include algae, herbs, shrubs and trees.
The Cocoa findings are particularly significant at a time when chocolate production is threatened by disease and the impact of climate change.
The International Cocoa Organisation has indicated that the world harvest for the 2023/2024 season will be around 500 million tons, a figure significantly lower than in previous years.
Dr James Richardson, a plant evolution scientist and research associate at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and currently based at University College Cork, is a leading figure in the research of the cocoa family.
His recent programme of work has also highlighted the value of preserved plant specimens found in natural history collections.
It was by examining herbarium specimens around the world, that Richardson’s doctoral student Matheus Colli-Silva, of the University of Sao Paulo, found that the newcomers did not belong to any of the 40 known species in the genus Theobroma.
All three are closely related to Theobroma cacao, the source of chocolate.
James Richardson explained: “In the last 60 years, only one new species of the cocoa genus Theobroma has been documented.
“The fact our three new species were uncovered in a relatively short period of time from herbarium specimens demonstrates the importance of maintaining natural history collections. There are many more species to be unearthed in the preserved material we already hold.”
Southeast Asian taxonomy leader at Edinburgh, and coordinator of the institute’s annual new species tally, Dr Mark Hughes, also underscored the growing significance of research on both living plants and preserved specimens.
In collaboration with Deden Girmansyah, from the Research Center for Biosystematics and Evolution, in Indonesia, he recently worked with specimens in the Edinburgh Glasshouses to scientifically describe a new begonia a continent away.
Dr Hughes concluded: “Assigning scientific names and data to species is at the core of biodiversity accounting. Yet, while the process of ‘discovering’ a new species can suggest the detection of something in its natural habitat, the reality is very different.
“Many new species have already been collected and are waiting in living and herbarium collections to be described.
“The ability to share DNA data and herbarium images has been of enormous benefit to our collaboration with plant taxonomists around the world.
“In Edinburgh alone, the Herbarium holds more than three million specimens and through our current programme to digitise these and make them globally freely available, we can speed up the ‘discovery’ process.”
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