Environmental effects of cocoa production populations and habitats to flourish. Finally, shade can be extremely helpful in keeping and lengthening the productivity of old growth Cacao plants. Environmental effects of cocoa production The environmental effects of cocoa production Cocoa Beans are a high demand consumer item all over the world. They are used in products such as chocolate, candy bars, drinks and cocoa powder. However, cocoa farming and the production of cocoa beans are extremely fragile and labour-intensive processes. The process begins with a Cacao plant, or Theobroma cacao, in which the beans are extracted from pods that grow directly on the cocoa trees branches.
Theobroma cacao there were two foci for domestication, one in the Lacandon Jungle area of Mexico and another in lowland South America. More recent studies of patterns of DNA diversity, however, suggest that this is not the case. One study sampled 1241 trees and classified them into 10 distinct genetic clusters. This study also identified areas, for example around Iquitos in modern Peru and Ecuador, where representatives of several genetic clusters originated more than 5000 years ago, leading to development of the variety, Nacional cocoa bean. This result suggests that this is where "T. cacao" was originally domesticated, probably for the pulp