What coffee varieties are F1 and H1 of the Costa Rican Musicians series?

Musician series of coffee flavor is very special, not only rare purple flowers, but also unique spice flavor! And the beans they use have been changed from the traditional Kaddura and Kaduai to the relatively rare F1 and H1 around 2020.

(F1 on the left and H1 on the right) the most common beans named as letters and numbers are SL28 and SL34 in Kenya. They are prefixed with the abbreviation SL of Scott Lab, and then combined with the number of the bean during the experiment! So, what is the meaning of these two F1 and H1? Camel spore rust (the source of leaf rust) first swept the American continent in F11970, when coffee cultivation was dominated by Arabica. Arabica, which has a single gene, cannot have the ability to resist leaf rust. Therefore, as the natural enemy of coffee trees, no tree (Arabica) survives wherever it goes.

In this context, in order to reduce the continuing losses caused by disasters to the coffee industry, the French Center for Agricultural Research and Development (CIRAD) and the Central American Coffee Organization (ROMECAFE) immediately launched an F1 program to cultivate a new generation of coffee! The American Agricultural Research Institute (IIAC) and the Costa Rican Centre for Tropical Research and Education (CATIE) assist in the implementation! Because they all feel that the disease resistance of the coffee trees planted in South America is too weak to survive this crisis. So they came up with the method of using hybrid breeding, so that the new generation of coffee not only has the flavor, but also has more tenacious vitality!

Unlike ordinary hybrid coffee, F1 requires very careful selection of parents with long genetic distance in order to breed F1 species with target effect. So the Costa Rican Tropical Research and Education Center selected four main coffee varieties from hundreds of varieties: Kaddura, Kaduai, Katim, Sachimo, and some wild varieties for cross-pollination between them. this is the main content of the F1 program. Over the next five years, F1 plans to produce 100 different F1 varieties, from which they selected 20 of the best varieties to breed. These first-generation F1 have strong disease resistance and drought resistance, as well as higher yields! Thanks to the efforts of those researchers, as of May 2021, there were nine precious F1 species in the world, and H1 is one of them.

The full name of H1H1 is Centroamericano H1, which is the result of continued research by Sebaco Laboratory in Nicaragua. H1 is a hybrid between Lumi Sudan and Saqimo T-5296.

It is worth mentioning that Lumi Sudan is an ancient Arabica species! It was found in the Rumei Valley of the Boma Plateau in Sudan, so it was named Rumei Sultan! Although its variety is excellent and its flavor is outstanding, its disease resistance is weak. Therefore, it was hybridized with Sachimo T-5296 (a hybrid of Verasaci and Katim), and then H1 species with good flavor, high adaptability and strong disease resistance was obtained.

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