The history of cocoa production in West Africa shows that commercial began the Gold Coast (Ghana) 1890s. By 1920s, Ghana had become world’s leading producer, accounting for over half all production. continued to be a producer until 1978, when Cote d’Ivoire topped as largest bean producer. It has since with about 40% share global This study aimed analyze competitiveness and similarity Ivorian Gh...

Cocoa beans from several types of post harvest treatments were processed into cocoa butter, cocoa powder and chocolate spread using traditional processing techniques. OTA was analyzed in two hundred and sixteen (216) samples of cocoa and cocoa derived products using HPLC with fluorimetric detection. It was found that OTA content in cocoa nibs depended only on the state of cocoa pod and the time...

Plants have been a good source of therapeutic agents for thousands of years; an impressive number of modern drugs used for treating human diseases are derived from natural sources. The Theobroma cacao tree, or cocoa, has recently garnered increasing attention and become the subject of research due to its antioxidant properties, which are related to potential anti-cancer effects. In the past few...

The sensory quality and the contents of quality-determining chemical compounds in unfermented and fermented cocoa from 100 cacao trees (individual genotypes) representing groups of nine genotype spectra (GG), grown at smallholder plantings in the municipality of Waslala, Nicaragua, were evaluated for two successive harvest periods. Cocoa samples were fermented using a technique mimicking recomm...

Chocolate production suffered a vast impact with the emergence of the "witches' broom" disease in cocoa plants. To recover cocoa production, many disease-resistant hybrid plants have been developed. However, some different cocoa hybrids produce cocoa beans that generate chocolate with variable quality. Fermentation of cocoa beans is a microbiological process that can be applied for the producti...

Liberalization of the cocoa market in West Africa, due to structural adjustment reforms, has resulted in the elimination of para-statal marketing boards and initiated the creation of new institutions to replace the marketing services of those agencies. Concerns have been raised as to the effects of these reforms on prices of cocoa received by farmers, welfare measures and competitiveness of mar...

Cocoa beans are rich in a number of beneficial bioactive compounds that are good for health. However, they have not been exploited to their fullest to produce high quality extract containing stable bioactive compound. The main objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the different solvent used for extraction on yield of cocoa butter extracts, oxidative value, phytosterols c...

Background It is well known that many bioactive peptides (intragenic) are encrypted in source proteins and that they can exert their function once released by proteolytic cleavage; e.g. hypotensive, opioids and antimicrobial peptides. However, other bioactive peptides may be “stuck” on a polipeptide chain with no cleavage sites for its release. These “non-obvious” intragenic peptides are also o...