Endangered species! It won't be easy to buy Arabica coffee after a while.

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They are also members of Arabica, why are some coffee beans so expensive?

Arabica, the tree species of good coffee, is the story of a beautiful love encounter. Unfortunately, Arabica, the crystallization of this beautiful love, is as weak as Lin Daiyu, so weak that she is now about to become extinct.

2 billion cups of coffee are consumed around the world every day, and 25 million families depend on growing coffee for a living. Coffee consumption has grown by 43% over the past 15 years, but researchers warn that Arabica, the world's hottest coffee tree, is under threat.

There are more than 120 kinds of coffee trees, but the only ones we drink most are Arabica and Robusta.

Robusta accounts for about 30% of the world's coffee bean production, mainly used in instant coffee, as the name suggests, it is a strong tree species. But if you want to drink good coffee, Arabica is the first choice.

Arabica coffee is on the verge of extinction

Arabica is an accidental combination of two coffee trees.

"it's a love story," said Dr. Timothy Schilling, a world coffee research institute. "more than 10,000 years ago, Arabica's parents met, like an one-night stand, creating Arabica." from then on, there was delicious coffee with a smooth taste and rich layers.

But there is less and less delicious coffee, because Arabica's physique is as weak as Lin Daiyu. The congenital deficiency of being prone to illness, as well as being more sensitive to temperature changes and rainfall, affects production.

Arabica faces a formidable challenge in Ethiopia, its birthplace, according to a team of researchers at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the largest botanical garden in the UK.

They experimented with computer models to find out what impact climate change would have on Arabica. They predicted that Ethiopia's wild Arabica would decline by 85% by 2080, and worse, 99.7% would disappear to the surface, nearly extinct.

"if we don't act now, the end of the century will also be the end of Ethiopia's wild Arabica coffee beans," said Dr Aaron Davis, who led the Qiuyuan coffee study.

The report attracted worldwide attention and spurred the coffee industry to take action. Qiuyuan's research team and their partners in Ethiopia have visited local coffee-producing areas to compare their predictions and current conditions. The team is currently working with the Ethiopian government to find ways to protect the coffee industry and move to colder highlands for cultivation, which may be one of the solutions. Some areas are not suitable for growing coffee at this stage and may become suitable in the future.

The coffee farm has a bigger impact.

In addition to wild coffee, Qiu's research has a greater impact on commercially grown coffee farms. Because the environment is the key, and genetics is another factor.

Wild species have greater genetic diversity, commercially grown coffee beans lack genetic diversity, and as a catastrophic consequence, they are prone to disease and infection. the greatest risk of growing coffee comes from leaf rust, a fungus that almost destroyed coffee trees in Sri Lanka at the end of the 19th century.

Coffee is an "orphan crop". "unlike other crop varieties, there is very little research on coffee," said Dr. Timothy Schilling, a world coffee research institute.

Arabica has not been known for long, and it was not until the end of the 19th century that scientists confirmed that it was an Ethiopian tree species, not from Arabian, which is similar to its name.

Because growing in tropical countries that lack research resources, there are only about 40 breeding institutions, which are pitifully small compared to the thousands of other crops, such as corn, rice and wheat. Lack of breeding leads to lack of diversity.

Scholars ambitious hope to use better breeding techniques to improve Arabica, in order to save good coffee from extinction, but the revolution has not yet succeeded, comrades still have to work hard.

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