The Chocolate Production in Kerala

         Everyone like chocolate, it is a usually sweet, brown food prepared from its main ingredient roastedand ground cacao seeds along with sugar,cocoa butter etc.

 In Kerala, cocoa is cultivated about 15, 894 hectares in 2016-17. The crop is now cultivated in an area of 10708 ha with an annual production of 6100 tonnes and productivityof 685 kg/ha. 

 Cocoa is a tropical crop grown under equitable climate with well distributed rainfall. In majority of the regions, where cocoa is cultivated, a high but often unevenly distributed annual rainfall occurs, resulting in fairly well defined dry and wet seasons. These seasonal changes exert marked effects on the growth of cocoa tree, and on its cycle of flushing , flowering , and fruiting. Shade studies on cocoa indicated  progressive increase in yield       ( with the use of chemical fertilizers ) and progressive decrease in vegetative growth with decreasing levels of shade (Nair et al.,1996).

From this its clear that change in climatic conditions in Kerala effects the growth of cocoa which is  one of the main ingredient for the preparation of THE CHOCOLATE.

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