Many chocolate lovers know that the delicious treat was first consumed as a bitter beverage thousands of years ago. But now a new study on the origins of the cacao species has found that the plant from which chocolate is derived actually goes back more than 10 million years.

The study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution says that genetic analysis shows that the genus of tree from which we get chocolate split off from related varieties about 12.7 million years ago, according to Live Science. Cacao trees as we know them today emerged a few million years later. The lead author of the study, from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland noted that the finding shows that chocolate is remarkably old for an Amazonian species.

Cacao trees used in the chocolate industry are genetically very similar, leaving them vulnerable to plant diseases that could devastate the entire population. A lack of genetic diversity was responsible for the extinction of a predecessor of the banana plant that we consume today.

But the recent finding suggests that cacao trees may have greater genetic diversity than previously thought.
That’s good news for chocolate lovers, since it is more challenging for agronomists to breed new types of species that have fewer genetic varieties to work with.

Given the age of the tree, the researchers say that significant genetic diversity is to be expected, with some varieties that may be useful in finding genes for disease resistance or even new flavors.

The cacao tree, known botanically as Theobroma cacao, grows seed pods from which chocolate is derived. The bitter seeds are fermented, dried, roasted, and processed into cocoa butter before being mixed with sugar to make sweet chocolate. Chocolate is a key ingredient in the $100 billion global market for sweets.