Chocolate lovers like taste of Mars Cocoa Genome Project

William Atkins
Thursday, 26 June 2008 21:58

Science - Biology

Announced on Thursday, June 26, 2008, Mars, USDA, and IBM are joining forces to sequence and analyze the entire cocoa genome for increased profits, sustained supplies, and improved farming and production of chocolate.



Mars, Incorporated is a global manufacturer of confectionery, which includes chocolates. The giant candy maker is headquartered in McLean, Virginia, but most of its U.S. activities come out of Hackettstown, New Jersey.

The scientific and research part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), called the Agricultural Research Service (ARS-USDA), is participating in the endeavor, along with the computing abilities and technologies of the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

Scientists and technicians with ARS-USDA and Mars will be performing the actual sequencing and research at the ARS-USDA facility in Miami, Florida, while IBM’s computer scientists at its Thomas J. Watson Research Center (Yorktown Heights, New York) will contribute the computers, including its Blue Gene supercomputer, to analyze the data.

Mark Dean, IBM vice president at IBM Research stated, "This collaboration is an opportunity for us to apply our computational biology and supercomputing expertise to help improve an economically important agricultural crop," said Dr Mark Dean, IBM fellow and vice president at IBM Research. [Reuters: “Sweet deal: Companies and U.S. team up to map cocoa DNA ”]

The five-year research project is targeted to improve the quality of cocoa by producing stronger and healthier plants, that more resistant to pests and diseases, which yield larger crops in less time.

Activities within the cocoa producing areas of South America, West Africa, Central America, and Papua New Guinea are already underway for the project.

More information about the chocolate project is found on page two.