Explainer - Mt Edna's hero cocoa tree: how many pods
Posted by R Medd on 23rd Aug 2026
The Mt Edna plantation produced a ‘hero’ tree recently. Here it is, with picking time approaching. To celebrate our ‘hero’ tree we ran a Cocoa Pod competition on Instagram.
The answer - Our hero had 368 pods when this photo was taken. One of our Mt Edna trees yields 40 – 80 pods.
The winner - The closest guess 357!
Cocoa yield
A tree yielding 40 – 80 pods should produce 25 -50 bars of Mt Edna chocolate of 70% cocoa (nibs plus cocoa butter).
Our hero had 368 pods when this photo was taken. Before harvest it may drop a few pods - say to 300 which is still four times the typical number. So, our hero yields 4 to 9 times the bars of a typical cocoa tree. We need more heroes.