Almost everyone has a comfort food they reach for when they’re feeling down. For the majority of us, that food is chocolate.
So, if you’re a chocolate lover, you may want to grab a chocolate bar and sit down before we deliver this terrible news: That chocolate in your hand, you better enjoy it, because it may soon be a thing of a past, and you’ll have nothing with which to drown your sorrows, according to Business Insider.
Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are predicting cacao plants—the main source of chocolate—will likely go extinct as early as 2050.
Cacao plants primarily grow in the rainforests of West Africa and Indonesia, the world’s leading producers of chocolate. But scientists say higher temperatures caused by climate change will make it nearly impossible for the plants to be cultivated.
Fortunately, the candy bar giant Mars has teamed up with researchers at the University of California Berkeley put a stop to chocolate doomsday with the help of CRISPR technology, a tool for editing genomes.
The technology allows researchers to alter DNA sequences and modify the plant’s gene functions to help them survive in warmer, dryer climates.
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(Story from WFLA.com)
