Discovery of Rosa Coffee Flavor description of Rosa Coffee

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In Santa Ana, Central America's second-largest city, in late summer 2012, Mario Mendoza Corleto, a coffee farmer, was patrolling his hillside coffee plantations as usual.

Suddenly, he noticed an anomaly: some of the trees had orange-red fungus covering their leaves, and many of the leaves had fallen off the ground.

This is leaf rust. The plant blight has been a taboo for Salvadoran coffee farmers since the 1970s.

Fungicide spraying once or twice a year is usually effective in preventing these diseases. However, it doesn't work now.

"This year is completely different," Corto told me recently."The spray isn't working."

As time passed, the problem became more serious.

By September, Corto's coffee plantation, which had once flourished, was barren.

Under the sun, the green fruit also became unusually hard, unable to bear candy red coffee cherries. In the past, Corto would hire workers to sort the cherries and make them into coffee beans, which were then used for roasting.

But that year, half of the trees on his family's century-old farm died, and the total harvest was only a quarter of its normal yield. As the situation worsened, Corto had to lay off most of his workers the following year.

What happened to Corto's farm was repeated across El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. These regions were once the source of raw materials for major coffee brands in western countries.

Over the next two years, leaf rust spread to coffee farms throughout Latin America, directly affecting more than half of the coffee harvest and causing direct losses of more than $1 billion.

Faced with this economic meltdown, coffee farmers and factories have taken the best course of action, triggering an immigration crisis.

The seemingly glamorous coffee industry is facing unprecedented challenges

So how does leaf rust spread overnight?

Researchers believe that a fungus that has evolved to follow the coffee crop in Ethiopia's coffee bush has recently undergone a major mutation and become extremely invasive. In addition, due to the influence of global climate change, the local hotter and hotter weather conditions have also objectively destroyed the resistance of coffee trees to natural diseases.

The rapid spread of leaf rust has not only caused huge losses to individual coffee farmers, it has also greatly shaken the entire $175 billion global coffee industry chain.

Coffee is one of the least genetically diverse and therefore least resistant modern crops on the planet we live on.

These coffee trees, especially those of good quality that produce delicious beans, have remained largely unchanged since the nineteenth century. As one industry insider puts it,"the coffee industry is driven by 150-year-old software."

In fact, since 2012, leaf rust has declined a lot due to a slight improvement in the climate and the artificial implementation of control measures.

But researchers believe it will soon be back, adding to the damage to coffee farmers who have experienced economic collapse and halved harvests.

Whether it's growing coffee and selling coffee, or simply drinking coffee, the changes have profound implications. For this reason, a group of scientists are working hard to save the coffee industry as much as possible before it deteriorates.

The seemingly glamorous coffee industry is facing unprecedented challenges.

In recent decades, coffee has moved beyond its role as a pure wholesale commodity. Coffee is mixed with other foods to create special drinks with cultural flavor, and even to some extent, it affects the sales of drinks.

While coffee culture and habits have changed, traditional coffee farming has not.

Even as we pay more attention to the quality and taste of coffee, that won't stop the world's best coffee from becoming increasingly vulnerable to adverse climate change and diseases like leaf rust.

Globally, there are two main coffee crops: Coffee Arabica and Coffee Robusta.

Robusta is a hardy variety that does not require much maintenance and is relatively resistant to diseases and pests. However, Robusta doesn't taste good, so it's mostly used to make instant coffee. If it is used to make hand-brewed coffee, its quality and taste will be greatly reduced.

It's no exaggeration to say that if you're a coffee lover, you don't want to drink nothing but Robusta for the rest of your life.

Arabica, by contrast, accounts for more than 60% of global coffee production and is the coffee variety most people prefer.

Arabica is more technically sophisticated and demanding, but the beans are smoother and more popular

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