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For centuries scientists have tried and failed to cultivate cocoa beans in Europe to satisfy the continent’s lust for chocolate.
But now a team of horticulturalists in Spain claims to be the first to have produced a significant cocoa crop, paving the way for the production of gourmet chocolate.
Beans grown in Malaga will be used by Andalusia’s only surviving chocolate factory to make a limited supply of confectionary this year.It was the Spanish who first brought the cocoa bean to Europe after discovering it during their conquest and colonisation of the Americas. Iñaki Hormaza, head of the Institute of Subtropical and Mediterranean Horticulture, who leads the project, is “proud” that Spain has been the first to grow it successfully in Europe.
The organisation, which is jointly run by the government’s national research council and Malaga university, has cultivated cocoa trees in its greenhouses near the southern coastal city since 2019 but only in the past few weeks has it harvested around 100kg of beans. In the EU the minimum cocoa content is 25 per cent for milk chocolate, and higher for dark.“We are growing about 80 cocoa trees in two greenhouses; one heated and one unheated. What makes this first harvest particularly successful is the fact that it has been achieved not only in the heated greenhouse, but also in the unheated one,” said Hormaza, who is in charge of the institute’s subtropical fruit growing department.
“Until now the only successful experiments in cocoa cultivation in Europe have been carried out in heated botanical gardens,” he added. “There have been many attempts since the 18th century in the open air and in unheated greenhouses, including in Malaga, but they have not worked until now.”
Hormaza said that the idea to produce a cocoa crop first came about during conversations with La Despensa de Palacio, the only chocolate factory left in Andalusia. Managers were interested in producing cocoa to make gourmet chocolates and provided some of the four species of cocoa plants successfully used in the experiment.
“We have already given cocoa beans to La Despensa de Palacio and staff there plan to produce the first chocolates early this year,” Hormaza said. “Depending on what the market will pay, we will see if it could be profitable.”
He added: “It is more ecological because it reduces the carbon footprint, but in the short term I don’t see it as something that is going to expand a lot. It would be a very gourmet market.”
Hormaza underscored the “great challenge” of growing a crop that suffers below 15C. “In the unheated greenhouse the temperature can drop almost to the minimum outside, which in Malaga can be [9C] on average in January,” he said. “The results indicate that, although it was to be expected, the plants are better in the heated greenhouse, but it is possible in both, which would reduce the production cost since the use of heating is not necessary.”
The other main obstacle was pollination. “As we don’t have the insects of the Amazon here we used the painstaking process of manual pollination. But we are investigating different species of insects in Europe to see if we can achieve it naturally.
”The exact origin of the cocoa or cacao tree in the Americas is disputed by modern botanical historians but some theories point to the Amazon basin. The chronicles of the Spanish conquistadors contain numerous mentions that its fruit was used by the Aztecs as a form of currency as well as for rituals, medicine and food.
It is not known for certain when cocoa first arrived in Spain, but documentary evidence suggests drinking chocolate was gaining popularity in the country by the first half of the 16th century.
The European chocolate market was valued at €42 billion last year, and the continent imported more than 2.2 million tonnes of cocoa beans, over half of global imports.
source: thetimes.co.uk
