As you nibble on a chocolate truffle or bite into a chocolate-dipped strawberry on Valentine’s Day, consider the elongated, ribbed pods of the cacao tree, which made that sweet treat possible. A group ...

Gardeners who love chocolate may want to grow cacao and make their own chocolate. Cacao trees grow well here in Hawaii and with room for a small tree where it can have a shady overstory, it’s worth ...

Remarkably, a cacao tree can live more than 200 years; however, they only typically produce cacao beans for roughly 25 years or so. The cacao plant itself is plump and bumpy, with an elongated, ...

Half of all cacao grown in Ecuador is ruined by a disease called frosty pod rot. But farmers, exporters, and chocolate-makers are finding sustainable ways to combat it. Frosty pod rot is a dangerous ...

It’s a wonder we have chocolate at all. Talk about persnickety, difficult flowers. Arguably some of the most important seeds on the planet — they give us candy bars and hot cocoa, after all — come ...