PNG cocoa has potential: Expert

Business

AN international chocolate taster says the potential of cocoa in PNG is very high and can be maintained if defects affecting quality are eliminated.
Martin Christy, founder of the chocolate review website Seventy%, was one of the five international and national judges who sampled a selection of PNG’s best cocoa during the Air Niugini Cocoa Warwagira show in Kokopo, East New Britain.
He said the potential of quality cocoa in PNG was fantastic.
“It is clean and nicely produced. There is not too much problem with smoke and dryers. Well-fermented, flavoured profile can be great,” he said.
“We saw examples from different regions in this competition and different flavoured profiles, different farms, high altitude, fruity, so potentially very good.
“The problem is to eliminate defects in quality. If this can happen, it could be some of the best quality cocoa in the world.”
On Thursday, the judges tasted the dried cocoa and used the evaluation system to score the 12 prize winners in the different categories for best male and female farmer, best plantation and best cooperative.
“Farmers may not know how good chocolate tastes,” Christy said.
“But the most important thing is how cocoa tastes. You can easily taste if it has something bad, pleasant, mouldy, cheesy and the first thing is, is it nice to eat.”
He said the problem in PNG was smoke getting into cocoa when it was dried.
“If we taste this, then we can give a feedback to farmers on how they can improve their farming.”