Would you believe about 1,700 liters of water is required to produce a 100g bar of chocolate? This seems like a ridiculously high number. So, in the famous words of Julius Sumner-Miller, “Why is it so?”
Well, the Cocoa tree, which provides the core ingredient of our chocolate, consumes copious amounts of water yet has a low yield (number of beans per tree). And this astonishing fact is not limited to cocoa. The linear tradeoff between water consumption and a plant’s production yield has been extensively documented. Due to water limitations and climate change, one of the greatest challenges agro-scientists face today is how to overcome this tradeoff in order to improve the plant Water-Use-Efficiency while maintaining high productivity.Crops demand enormous amounts of water when producing yield. For example, to produce 1kg of white rice requires about 2,500 liters of water; and corn is no slouch either at about 1,200 liters on average.[1]
In fact, most of the water transpires to the air as a side effect to photosynthesis CO2 absorption.
Water-Use-Efficiency
