Day 1 – Creating substrate, planting, grafting and Cocoa harvesting! – As well as meeting Sam
the intern #MarsAmbassadors
The first official day of the Mars Ambassador Program 2014
in Brazil – a bean adventure!
We headed out bright and early at 6.30am for the start of
our adventure...
First up, a very warm welcome from the associates at the Mars Center for Cocoa Science and a meet and great of a yummy breakfast:
Into the day, an educational opener into MCCS and the work they do from Jean Marelli (above, bottom right), detailing the incredible necessity for the work of the center to try and reduce the damage of disease and help farmers increase there productivity, if not we face a very really issue that by 2020 demand will have far outstripped supply.
The dirty work - Creating Substrate and planting seeds!
There is a lot of preparation that goes into making sure the Cocoa trees at the MCCS have the best chance for growth. Preparing the earth for the plans (substrate) requires 8 parts soil, 2 parts manure, and a magic mixture of micro nutrients, lime, Phosphorus and potassium:
Once you have created the substrate, it's time to fill up plastic blags ready for seed planting!
To plant the seeds we first use sawdust to clean the pulp,
And then plant them around so one end just touches the surface (about 3cm deep).
These plants are then left for 2 months, and transferred at 6 months ready to be planted outside, or grafted....
There are 3 types of grafting, top (grafting a branch of one high yield plant, to the base of a disease resistance (but low yield plant). There is bud grafting, taken from the stem of one plant and being added to another and the most often used, where a small branch is grafted onto a mature tree in the field to enhance production.
We did a good job!
The dirty work - Creating Substrate and planting seeds!
There is a lot of preparation that goes into making sure the Cocoa trees at the MCCS have the best chance for growth. Preparing the earth for the plans (substrate) requires 8 parts soil, 2 parts manure, and a magic mixture of micro nutrients, lime, Phosphorus and potassium:
Once you have created the substrate, it's time to fill up plastic blags ready for seed planting!
To plant the seeds we first use sawdust to clean the pulp,
And then plant them around so one end just touches the surface (about 3cm deep).
These plants are then left for 2 months, and transferred at 6 months ready to be planted outside, or grafted....
There are 3 types of grafting, top (grafting a branch of one high yield plant, to the base of a disease resistance (but low yield plant). There is bud grafting, taken from the stem of one plant and being added to another and the most often used, where a small branch is grafted onto a mature tree in the field to enhance production.
Harvesting!
These guys know when it's going to rain, the yellow raincoats really came into use this afternoon!
Brilliant fun cutting and collecting the pods,
Brad getting stuck in
We made a pile of our harvest, ready for one of the experience members of staff (so we don’t cut ourselves) splitting the pods with a machete whilst we extract the cocoa beans....it took 3 of us and we still couldn't keep up!
Our harvest - Impressive!
It took 3 of us to keep up with the shelling!
After an afternoons work here was our harvest - 96kg of Cocoa Beans, more than one Tim.
We then loaded the beans onto the back of a truck and headed back to the MCCS, all the beans where transferred into then unit for fermentation, the process that helps the beans develop their rich flavor.
A brilliant day!
These guys know when it's going to rain, the yellow raincoats really came into use this afternoon!
Brilliant fun cutting and collecting the pods,
We made a pile of our harvest, ready for one of the experience members of staff (so we don’t cut ourselves) splitting the pods with a machete whilst we extract the cocoa beans....it took 3 of us and we still couldn't keep up!
We then loaded the beans onto the back of a truck and headed back to the MCCS, all the beans where transferred into then unit for fermentation, the process that helps the beans develop their rich flavor.
A brilliant day!
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