4
UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 4 FEBRUARY, 2018
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
“Good chocolate is like a good piece of music,”
says Dr.
Darin Sukha: as you sample it, you’ll experience different
flavour notes which combine to make a memorable
harmony. It’s like an aria of taste, or meditating with your
mouth: a quiet adventure in sensory pleasure.
Fruity or floral, roasted or subtly spicy, the possibilities
of chocolate flavours are endless. Some chocolates may have
hints of jasmine or salty caramel, while others may seep
into your tastebuds like dark velvet rum at midnight. But
it takes skill, knowledge, imagination, and excellent cocoa
beans to achieve true deliciousness.
Flavour, like smell, is deeply linked to our emotions
and memories. In cocoa beans, almost everything helps
shape the flavour, starting from the genetic makeup of
the cocoa plant, to the soil from which the plant draws
nutrients, to the quality of the sunshine and the rainfall,
“terroir” as the French call it. After you collect the beans,
how you choose to ferment, dry, and process them to best
bring out their body and richness is especially important
for developing flavours.
With a passion for cocoa and fine chocolate, Dr. Sukha
leads the Food Technology Team at the Cocoa Research
Centre (CRC) at UWI St. Augustine. He is very excited
about the new chocolate factory in Mt Hope which is soon
to be built. It has been his dream.
At the time of this interview, he was in Brazil, testing
new machinery for the chocolate factory. The factory will
be part of the International Fine Cocoa Innovation Centre
(IFCIC), a project being partly funded by a €2million grant
from the European Union/African, Caribbean and Pacific
Science and Technology Fund.
The IFCIC is the brainchild of plant genetics expert,
Professor Pathmanathan Umaharan, who leads the
Cocoa Research Centre tucked away in a wing of the
Frank Stockdale building at The UWI. The IFCIC aims
to rejuvenate our cocoa sector by helping to develop and
spread better technologies, skills and quality products, as
well as seed a lively, delicious, indigenous cocoa culture.
IFCIC partners include the European Union, the African,
Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, the ACP Science
& Technology Programme, The UWI, and the Caribbean
Fine Cocoa Forum.
The IFCICwill comprise a chocolate factory, a business
incubator facility, a living museum of cocoa plants, a
cocoa tourism centre, a restaurant, kitchen and labs, and a
Chocolate Academy for courses in chocolate making. The
chocolate factory will produce cocoa nibs, cocoa liquor (the
unsweetened liquid base for chocolate), and couverture
or finished chocolate (both dark and milk). The idea is
to have a total bean-to-bar model to stimulate the sector
and enable applied research to have real community and
industry impact.
Dr Sukha sits on a panel of judges for the International
Cocoa Awards, of the Cocoa of Excellence Programme,
a global competition celebrating the diversity of cocoa
flavours, held every two years since 2009. There he gets to
taste some of the world’s best-flavoured cocoa. The 2017
competition received 166 samples of fermented and dried
cocoa beans from 40 countries: “Some of the flavours will
blow your mind!” he said.
Dr Sukha wants to help T&T cocoa producers develop
their own equally wonderful flavours. Trinidad is uniquely
positioned for this, because we grow Trinitario cocoa, one
of the world’s finest.
“While bulk cocoa beans, which are 95%of the market,
might sell for about US $2,000/ton, fine flavour beans (5%
of the cocoa market) sell for US$5,000-US$10,000/ton,”
says a senior CRC staffer.
There’s much money to be made from cocoa’s most
popular product, chocolate. Chocolate is one of the
best-loved foods on the planet, with global retail sales of
US$101 billion in 2015. But so far, the lion’s share of cocoa
profits is being made by a few big multinational chocolate
manufacturers and retailers in the global north, such as
Mars Inc (USA), Mondelez International (USA), Nestle
SA (Switzerland), and Ferrero Group (Luxembourg/Italy).
As T&T cannot compete with big bulk chocolate firms,
it makes sense to focus on high-end, high-quality niche
cocoa products. The IFCIC chocolate factory is one step
towards this. It aims to boost local expertise in making
excellent, unique home-made chocolate and other cocoa
products.
To accomplish this requires several things, including
access to good and plentiful local cocoa stocks, training
in manufacturing processes, access to a factory, and
developing the craft and taste sensibility to discern, enjoy
andmake good chocolate flavours. Genetic research into the
cocoa plant itself can help develop better tasting, resilient
varieties.
The Cocoa Research Centre has had a head start on
such genetic research. It is home to the International Cocoa
Genebank, the largest collection of cocoa varieties in the
world, with 2,200 varieties. The CRC also has more than
80 years of research under its belt through its previous
incarnations as the Cocoa Research Unit, and the Cocoa
Research Scheme (formed in 1930 under the Imperial
College of Tropical Agriculture).
In addition to its scientific research, the CRC also
provides certification, post-harvest support, chocolate-
making support, DNAfingerprinting, breeding support and
disease screening, paid services for clients throughout Latin
America and the Caribbean, earning some useful foreign
exchange. And it has been running its own tiny in-house
chocolate factory in UWI since 2012, making a 70% dark
chocolate bar from local cocoa.
Prof Umaharan has long had a vision for the huge
potential development of not only the T&T cocoa industry,
but also the local anthurium and hot pepper sectors. But
visions remain dreams until they are funded. So Prof
Umaharan, six years ago, on behalf of the CRC, applied to
the UWI’s RDI Fund to do a special project on the genetic
control and identifying markers for some specific cocoa
traits. The project, approved in 2012, looked at cocoa
yield, pod characteristics, disease resistance, cadmium
bioaccumulation, rooting characteristics and flavour.
The project has since become a rising star among
UWI’s RDI-funded projects because its findings attracted
significant additional external funding to support more
In Brazil, chocolate tempering for moulding: The chocolate factory
will produce cocoa nibs, cocoa liquor (the unsweetened liquid base for
chocolate), and couverture or finished chocolate (both dark and milk).
Building the
COCOA DREAM
Blocks of Chocolate
B Y S H E R E E N A L I
Professor Pathmanathan
Umaharan at World
Chocolate Day event
in 2017. The chocolate
factory will be part
of the International
Fine Cocoa Innovation
Centre (IFCIC). The
Centre will comprise
a chocolate factory,
a business incubator
facility, a living museum
of cocoa plants, a
cocoa tourism centre, a
restaurant, kitchen and
labs, and a Chocolate
Academy for courses in
chocolate making.
