A Reading student made six chocolate bars from cocoa grown on campus

Positive News reported on November 4, 2026, that master's student Maha Khan made six chocolate bars from cocoa grown at the University of Reading. She studies food security, with a focus on chocolate and the people who grow cocoa. Khan harvested pods from the university greenhouses and used British milk and sugar. The pods would normally have been removed from the collection unused. She named the bars The Reading 100, for the university's centenary. She told Positive News that the campus already had the plants and the processing equipment, and that nobody there had made the chocolate before.

The greenhouses are the International Cocoa Quarantine Centre, which holds more than 300 types of cocoa away from the pests and diseases of growing regions. Plants stay in quarantine for two years. Staff can change temperature, water, and carbon dioxide to see which varieties cope, then send cuttings to other institutes for breeding programs aimed at yield and tolerance of heat, pests, and disease. Khan said that material is meant to reach smallholder farmers. Positive News noted that the U.S. Department of Agriculture stopped co-funding the center in March 2025. The news is the six bars and the quarantine work already underway. It is not a new commercial supply of British chocolate, and it does not say the center's funding gap has been filled.