Institute takes steps to maintain quality of Ghana’s cocoa beans

The Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) has stepped up efforts to maintain the quality of the nation’s cocoa beans with the establishment of a Flavor laboratory for chocolate production. It is meant to help farmers to see the marked difference in taste between chocolate produced from well-fermented and thoroughly dried beans and the poorly handled beans. Mr. Stephen Yaw Opoku, Head of the Laboratory, said this way, they would be encouraged to stick to traditional best practices that had over the years helped Ghana to enjoy premium on its beans. He broke the news when he took students from the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania, United States (US) round to inspect the facility at New Tafo, in the East Akim Municipality. The school was established by the Hershey Chocolate Company and the students were in the country to see for themselves how cocoa, the raw material for chocolate was produced. Mr. Opoku said the Institute was determined to ensure that the high quality of the nation’s cocoa, which had won global acclaim, was sustained. The students, later, visited the molecular biology laboratory of CRIG, which has been developing high yielding cashew seeds.