Operation Wonka, the f ight to save chocolate

BRITISH scientists have embarked on a mission worthy of Willy Wonka – to save the world’s chocolate supplies.

With global demand for chocolate soaring and disease ravaging crops in cocoa-producing countries, the scientists are battling to develop hardier and more productive cocoa plants.

The epicentre of the British effort to save chocolate is a high-security £1 million greenhouse in Berkshire.

There, a team from Reading University is hard at work on the project, dubbed Operation Wonka after the character Willy Wonka in Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

Paul Hadley, a professor of horticulture, says that the International Cocoa Quarantine Centre was set up to ensure that the global supply of chocolate can keep up with booming demand, which is being fuelled by the sweet-toothed Chinese.

Most of the chocolate eaten in Britain is made from cocoa beans produced in West Africa. But a virus known as cocoa swollen shoot and an insect called a mirid are devastating crops there.

Professor Hadley said producers in West Africa want to try varieties grown in Venezuela and Indonesia, but do not want to risk introducing diseases and pests associated with those crops.

He added: ‘We receive a South American variety and quarantine it here for three months to ensure it is disease-free. We then grow, observe and test the plants, and when we are happy the variety is safe, we send a cutting to Ghana. These are then propagated.’