Patrick Edward McGovern ca. 7000-6600 B.C. It was a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey, and grape and/or hawthorn ("Crataegus pinnatifida" and "C. cuneata") fruit. The laboratory and collaborators began studying some of the most ancient chocolate from ancient Mesoamerica (ca. 1400-1100 B.C.) in 2004 Jars from Puerto Escondido in Honduras were in the shape of the cacao ("Theobroma cacao") pod or fruit, as if to advertise the contents as being a chocolate beverage. The fruit's sweet pulp contains about 15% sugar, which naturally ferments to a 5 to 7% alcoholic beverage. This beverage might have led to the domestication of the tree.
Moniliophthora perniciosa Moniliophthora perniciosa Moniliophthora perniciosa (previously "Crinipellis perniciosa") is a fungus that causes "witches' broom disease" (WBD) of the cocoa tree ("Theobroma cacao" L.). "T. cacao" a tropical tree with seeds that are processed into cocoa (=cacao) products. This pathogen is currently limited to South America, Panama and the Caribbean, and is perhaps one of the best-known cocoa diseases, thought to have co-evolved with cocoa in its centre of origin (first recorded in the Brazilian Amazon in 1785). This fungus is hemibiotroph, with two characteristic phases: biotrophic (expanding and infecting, on living tissue) and saprotrophic (producing basidiospores, on necrotic tissue). The