A student from the University of Reading in the UK has created a chocolate bar made entirely from British ingredients.

The move, which saw cocoa sourced from Berkshire, is just the second time a chocolate bar like this has been made. The first time was in 1932 when confectionery brand Rowntree’s gifted one to the then six-year-old Princess Elizabeth.

According to Yahoo!News food security master’s student Maha Khan created the chocolate bar by harvesting, fermenting and processing the Reading-grown cocoa.

Maha told the Today program she made the chocolate bar to highlight the challenges facing the cocoa growing industry.

“It’s incredible that we can make 100 per cent British chocolate, but in the context of climate change, pests and diseases, there are estimates that 30 to 40 per cent is lost,” she said.

“And we’ve seen with these heatwaves, climate change, these problems and challenges are only going to get exacerbated.”

The cocoa Maha used was grown at the University of Reading’s International Cocoa Quarantine Centre, which hosts a collection of more than 300 types of cocoa plant.

The climate-controlled centre is carefully managed to prevent the spread of pests and diseases between the different cocoa-growing regions of the world, while also providing scientists with the opportunity to closely study the plants.

Maha said she felt it was important to highlight the research being done at the centre, which not many people were aware of.

“It is the primary growing hub of transfer for 97 per cent of cocoa-growing countries,” she said.

“So the cocoa is quarantined there for two years, and so from those plants that are growing I decided to make this chocolate bar.

“I harvested the cocoa from the quarantine centre, removed the pulp, the beans, fermented it, which takes about seven to 10 days, then I laid it out in the sun, because we’ve had glorious weather, that helped dry it.

“And from then it was just a process of drying, roasting, and at the university facilities I used the lab to winnow, grind, crunch, blend with the milk and sugar.

“It’s a lot of work.”

Director of AgriFood Futures at the University of Reading, Professor CArol Wagstaff, said the UK chocolate industry rests on a supply chain that starts thousands of miles away in the tropics of Africa, South America, and Asia.

“A resilient global market is crucial to the many smallholder farmers who underpin the industry and find themselves farming in some of the regions most exposed to risks from climate change, as well as to chocolate makers and chocolate lovers in the UK,” she said.

“International trade in food can be a good thing, providing economic stability for communities while using natural energy resources for production, and we need to invest in research to keep threats at bay.”