History of chocolate in Spain In modern Spain, traces of the history of the drink can be seen in the chocolate companies, the chocolate shops and museums. The [Mesoamerican] origin of the cacao tree (to which Linnaeus gave the scientific name Theobroma cacao in 1753) is disputed by modern botanical historians since there are different hypotheses about the region from which it comes. Thus, some theories point to the Amazon region; however, it is estimated that the plant also grew in the wild in other parts of Americas, including the plains of the Orinoco Basin. It is very likely that the Olmecs knew the cacao
Theobroma cacao up to 8% of cacao pods dry weight. The cacao genome appears close to the hypothetical hexaploid ancestor of all dicotyledonous plants, and it is proposed as an evolutionary mechanism by which the 21 chromosomes of the dicots' hypothetical hexaploid ancestor underwent major fusions leading to cacao's 10 chromosome pairs. The genome sequence enables cacao molecular biology and breeding for elite varieties through marker-assisted selection, in particular for genetic resistance to fungal, oomycete and viral diseases responsible for huge yield losses each year. In 2017-18, due to concerns about survivability of cacao plants in an era of global warming in