Cosmos chocolate reintroduction in Mexico, Digi Mart USA News: A Mexican flower whose petals give off a chocolate-like scent survived for decades in other countries, and researchers now want it to grow again in Mexico. The effort has drawn the attention of scientists seeking to conserve and cultivate the plant from local genetic material.
Cosmos atrosanguineus, known as cosmos chocolate, is a species endemic to Mexico whose petals release an aroma similar to chocolate, according to a report by Xataka México. Xataka reports that specimens survived outside their natural habitat because collections and cultivation in Europe, Japan and New Zealand preserved the plant at a time when it was believed to be extinct in the wild in Mexico.
Mexican researchers relocated wild populations. Xataka cites records from 2007 in San Luis Potosí, Guanajuato and Querétaro, and a key discovery in 2015 in Hidalgo involving researcher Bulmaro Morales Vázquez and colleagues at the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo.
Following that collection, the team stored genetic material at Chapingo and began conservation and genetic improvement work aimed at developing varieties suitable for cultivation in Mexico, according to Xataka. El Informador, which traces the project’s history, states that the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo registered the resulting variety, called “Dulce Amanecer,” with the National Catalogue of Plant Varieties, and that the work received university recognition for its contribution to conservation.
While the recovery and registration of a variety open the possibility of cultivating cosmos chocolate in Mexico, Xataka warns that the species remains at risk. Its conservation depends on protecting wild populations and establishing reproduction and commercial management practices.
The researchers’ stated goal is for cosmos chocolate not to remain only in foreign collections, but to grow sustainably again in its country of origin through reproduction, improvement and cultivation programs based on Mexican genetic material.
