![]() It modifies the metabolism and drains the plant’s energy, competing with fruit production and root growth. What happens to this tissue is comparable to cancer. “We demonstrate for the first time that the fungus synthesizes cytokinin and that this hormone directly or indirectly alters the plant’s hormone balance, leading to excessive growth of infected tissue. The findings are reported in an article in the journal New Phytologist. Bahia is no longer Brazil’s foremost cocoa-producing state, having fallen behind Pará, and Brazil ranks seventh worldwide, with a national crop of 250,000 tons in 2020.Ī study conducted in Brazil by the University of São Paulo’s Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture (CENA-USP) and Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ-USP), with local and foreign partners, has brought to light important new information about the process of infection by M. Healthy trees can be seen alongside trees blighted by the disease. Several initiatives have been undertaken since then, but the fungus has yet to be eradicated. For the natural environment, it was a disaster, as Brazilian cocoa trees are grown in the shade of Atlantic Rainforest remnants and have traditionally been an important incentive for conservation of the biome. Falling incomes and rising debt wiped out many cocoa farms, bankrupting growers and driving up unemployment. As a result of the outbreak, its annual harvest had fallen to about 100,000 tons by 2000. ![]() Brazil was then the world’s second-largest grower of the crop, producing more than 400,000 metric tons of cocoa beans per year in the mid-1980s. Endemic to the Amazon, in 1989 the disease spread to the south of Bahia, a state in the Northeast region. The symptoms include deformity, rotting and death of the affected parts of cocoa trees, which sprout bundles of stunted twigs resembling old brooms. ![]() By José Tadeu Arantes | Agência FAPESP – The worst crisis ever suffered by Brazil’s growers of cocoa trees was due to a severe outbreak of witch’s broom disease, caused by the fungus Moniliophthora perniciosa.
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