New Delhi, June 18 -- The world's chocolate industry boasts revenues of more than $140bn. In recent years the market for cacao beans, the crucial ingredient, has often been tight. In April 2024, after poor harvests in West Africa, the price passed $10,000 per tonne for the first time. Although it has fallen back since, it remains significantly higher than earlier in the decade.

A good time, then, for the world's farmers to try to boost their harvests. One way would be to pollinate their existing plants more efficiently, so as to produce more of them in the next generation. There is a problem, though: no one has been quite sure how cocoa plants are pollinated. Now, though, work by Eliza Van de Sande, a PhD student at Vrije University in B...