VOA慢速英语2010年-Agriculture Report - Unwrapping the Ge

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Cacao or cocoa trees grow in hot, rainy areas of Africa, Asia and Central and South America. Their beans are used to make cocoa powder, cocoa butter and of course chocolate.

There are five to six million growers, maybe more. Many are poor family farmers with only a few hectares.

West Africa produces more than half of all cocoa beans. Ivory Coast leads the world in production, followed by its neighbor Ghana.

The trees are usually in their fifth year when they start to grow the pods that contain the beans. The trees produce the most pods when they are ten, but they are still productive long after that.

Workers use large knives to cut the lower pods and long tools to remove pods from high on the tree. Later they break open the pods to remove the beans.

A half-gram of chocolate requires about four hundred beans. The World Cocoa Foundation says an average pod contains twenty to fifty beans. And experts say growers can lose perhaps one-third of their harvest to diseases and insects.

Scientists have mapped the genetic² code of two kinds of cacao or cocoa tree, which provide the beans used to make chocolate

But now scientists have genetic maps of two kinds of cocoa trees. These genomes are mostly complete and could lead scientists to new ways to increase production and prevent disease.

Mapping genes³ is the first step to understanding an organism. Next comes learning the job of each gene¹.

The American food company Mars took the lead in paying for mapping the genes of the Forastero cocoa tree. The Forastero provides eighty to ninety percent of the world's cocoa beans. Mars depends on those beans for its M&Ms and other chocolate candies.

The company's research partners included several universities and the United States Department of Agriculture.

The average West African cocoa farmer produces about four hundred kilos of beans per hectare. But Howard-Yana Shapiro, head of plant science and external research at Mars, thinks that science could greatly increase the yield.

HOWARD-YANA SHAPIRO: "There's a yield potential of maybe four thousand kilos, ten times what the average is in West Africa."

A competitor of Mars, Hershey's, supported the gene mapping of the Criollo, a far less common cacao tree. Cirad, a French government research center, led scientists from six countries in creating that genome.

We'll talk more about the cocoa industry next week, when we look at efforts to help child laborers⁴ in Ivory Coast and Ghana.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson and Steve Baragona. You can read and listen to our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. And you can watch captioned⁵ videos on YouTube at VOA Learning English. I'm Bob Doughty
 

1 gene   

n.遗传因子，基因

参考例句：

• A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
• The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。

2 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

3 genes   

n.基因( gene的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You have good genes from your parents, so you should live a long time. 你从父母那儿获得优良的基因，所以能够活得很长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Differences will help to reveal the functions of the genes. 它们间的差异将会帮助我们揭开基因多种功能。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 生物技术的世纪

4 laborers   

n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工

参考例句：

• Laborers were trained to handle 50-ton compactors and giant cranes. 工人们接受操作五十吨压土机和巨型起重机的训练。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. 雇佣劳动完全是建立在工人的自相竞争之上的。 来自英汉非文学 - 共产党宣言

5 captioned   

a.标题项下的； 标题所说的

参考例句：

• This paper reviews the production, development and nationalization of the captioned materials. 本文就铜系合金引线框架材料的生产、发展和国产化进程作一论述。
• Please advise other considerable hotels for this captioned group. 请推荐其它一些高级的旅馆给这一群打标语的人。