BRITISH scientists have launched a mission worth of Willy Wonka himself - to save the world's chocolate supplies.
With global demand for chocolate soaring and disease ravaging crops in the world's biggest cocoa-producing countries, the scientists are battling to develop hardier and more productive cocoa plants.
They launched the mission - dubbed 'Operation Wonka' after the character Willy Wonka in Roald Dahl's classic children's book Charlie And The Chocolate Factory in a £1 million greenhouse in Berkshire.
A team from Reading University is hard at work on the project and the 'Willy Wonka' of the operation is Paul Hadley, a professor of horticulture, who explains that the 'Chocolate Factory', or International Cocoa Quarantine Centre, was set up to ensure that the global supply of chocolate can keep up with booming demand, which is being fuelled by the sweet-toothed Chinese.
He said: 'Our aim is to provide new genetic plant material for cocoa-producers which will help them by giving them better-quality and more productive cocoa beans. The drive is to find disease-resistant and highest yielding varieties.'
Most of the chocolate eaten in Britain is made from cocoa beans produced in Ghana and Ivory Coast in West Africa. But a virus called cocoa swollen shoot and an insect called a mirid are devastating crops there.
