World Cocoa Foundation Research Update: February 2009

Robert D. Lumsden, Plant Pathologist and WCF Scientific Advisor

WORLD COCOA FOUNDATION: From Bill Guyton, WCF President

Dear WCF Members and Supporters, the World Cocoa Foundation works in alliances with several international agricultural development organizations. For the past four years, we have been members of the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development (AIARD), composed of agricultural leaders from US land grant universities, USDA, non-government organizations and the private sector. In their newsletter, the alliance between World Cocoa Foundation and the USDA Borlaug Program was highlighted. Several of our member companies are mentioned in the article. We are very pleased that this program is being highlighted in the newsletter with a broad distribution. 

RESEARCH GROUPS:

Mark Guiltinan  and Siela Maximova, Penn State University, recently visited Ecuador and attended a day long seminar at INIAP in Pichilingue. While there they visited the Nestle farm where they are conducting a field test of somatic embryo [SE] plants.  After over 4 years of growth, the comparison of these plants to seed-grown plants and plants propagated by grafting is very favorable. The SE generated plants are now producing large amounts of pods comparable to seeded or grafted plants. They are now in the process of working with Nestle scientists to analyze their data and will publish a manuscript in 2009 describing this work.

From Loren D. Gautz, Associate Professor of Bioengineering, CTAHR, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1955 East-West Road, AgSc 218, Honolulu, HI96822.  Micro-fermentation methods have been used for a number of years to evaluate small amounts of cacao beans, which typically rely on use of nylon or polyethylene mesh bags that hold the beans that are buried in a larger mass, or "mother" fermentation heap or box. The method described below proposes a way of fermenting beans in laboratories where larger quantities are not available. 

The fermenters, shown in figure below, are one half of 16 that we fabricated to test up to 14 fermentation variables at a time. We place the fermenters in two incubators allowing us to control heat loss so that we do not have to use large volumes. By using two incubators we can set two levels of temperature. We can control the temperature of the incubator based on the bean temperature using a solid-state relay and a Campbell Scientific data logger. Our other variables are evaluating cultures of yeasts, lacto-bacilli, and aceto-bacilli found in Hawaii. The fermenters are made from extruded 100 mm acrylic tube with 3 mm walls long enough to accommodate a kilogram of fresh beans. The cups to catch the sweatings are solvent welded in a groove cut in the 8 mm sheet used for the base. A groove is cut on both sides of another piece of 8 mm sheet to be used as the bottom of the main tube. Holes in the separator are smaller on the top to prevent binding. This separator is not fixed in place to allow easy cleaning and extraction of the beans. A circular cover is cut to easily slide in the main tube allowing us to ferment beans from single pods up to 2 liters of beans. We have used the fermenters with bakers yeast as the inoculant and 35°C for 3days and 45°C for 3days to make good chocolate.  This technique is related to the publication, listed below under ‘’Recent Cacao Publications,’’ by Bittenbender, H.C. and Kling, E. Making Chocolate from Scratch. University of Hawaii, Cooperative Extension Service.  Food Safety and Technology, FST-33, 2009.

 

Continue >>