Episode:  10
Title: The Calyx
Broadcast: October 15th
Presenter: Nigel Ruck

Today Nigel visits the recently constructed and completed Calyx at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney to take a South American tropical journey through chocolate. He speaks to a chocolate king about the beautiful tropical garden and sweet addiction.

• The perfect guide to show him through The Calyx is Horticultural Supervisor Randy Sing. Nige and Randy speak about the South American rainforest, which has been developed in The Calyx because it’s the beginning of the story of chocolate.
• The truly spectacular Theobroma Cocao is one of the most commonly used species used for chocolate and would naturally grow in South America.
• There’s over a billion trees needed on the planet to provide the amount of chocolate people want, therefore there’s trees growing everywhere around the world.
• There are trees growing here in Australia, up in North Queensland, and some even in the forest where they would normally naturally grow, rather than in a plantation.
• The display takes us all the way through the chocolate journey, as far back as ancient Aztecs in Mayan times, to the rainforest, plantations, harvesting, milling, to the final product. The use of information walls and the huge greenwall at The Calyx is a chocolate-lovers paradise.
• Did you know? It takes 600 seeds to make 1-kilo of chocolate!

Royal Botanic Garden Sydney
W: www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au