New wild coffee varieties found in Africa Arabica coffee varieties are expected to improve their high temperature resistance.

Professional coffee knowledge exchange More coffee bean information Please pay attention to coffee workshop (Weixin Official Accounts cafe_style)

A recent study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research suggests that climate change will have an impact on the yield and quality of Ethiopian specialty coffee beans. In order to ensure that the global coffee supply chain can adapt to climate change speed, coffee planting researchers are constantly looking for unknown coffee varieties for research and analysis, breeding and hybridization, etc., hoping that coffee varieties can adapt to climate change through their own, but also produce high-quality coffee fruit.

On April 19, Aaron Davids, an expert at the Royal Botanic Gardens, published a research report entitled "Arabica-like flavor in a heat-tolerant wild coffee species" in the international top academic journal Nature Plants.

Researchers found a little-known wild coffee variety in the rainforest of Sierra Leone, Africa, whose leaves are narrower than those of Arabica, so the researchers named the wild variety Coffea stenophylla. Studies have found that narrow-leaf coffee is more resistant to high temperatures and heavy rainfall, and its flavor is similar to high-quality Arabica coffee beans. The discovery of wild varieties could lead to coffee tree varieties that can adapt to climate change and produce high quality coffee beans.

Aaron Davids said in his research report that this wild coffee variety is endemic to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. It was exported to Europe before the 20th century. Many historical documents show that narrow leaf coffee has excellent aroma. Until the emergence of the Robusta variety in the early 20th century, narrow leaf coffee began to be forgotten, and no sensory information was published about narrow leaf coffee, which was thought to have disappeared in Guinea and Sierra Leone until it was rediscovered in Sierra Leone in 2019.

After narrow leaf coffee was rediscovered in Sierra Leone in 2019, researchers began breeding narrow leaf coffee varieties in Reunion's Mascarene Islands (native to Ivory Island) in 2020. After obtaining the narrow leaf coffee bean samples, standard sensory evaluation was performed against two Arabica coffee samples and a Robusta coffee sample, and narrow leaf coffee was found to have similar flavor profiles to high quality Arabica coffee.

In addition to sensory comparisons, Aaron Davids led the team in simulating the climate adaptation of narrow-leaf coffee varieties. Narrow leaf coffee varieties were found to be able to grow under high temperature conditions/higher than Robusta varieties could tolerate, with an average temperature of 24.9 ° C, at least 6 ° C higher than that of Arabica varieties. The report suggests that Arabica coffee varieties may be better able to adapt to climate change.

More fine coffee beans, please add private WeChat Qianjie Coffee, WeChat: kaixinguoguo0925