There are pink coffee flowers! What's the difference between it and white coffee flowers?

For millions of farmers around the world, as long as the coffee trees begin to bloom in clusters of fragrant white flowers, it means that the season is about to enter the harvest stage. The more luxuriant and dense the petals are, the more coffee fruit farmers can harvest.

In our past impression, coffee flowers are generally elegant and simple pure white, composed of 5-6 leaves, inflorescences arranged in clusters on twigs. Every year in February or March, the coffee trees next to Qianjie stores will blossom randomly, emitting a similar smell of jasmine, magnolia, thyme and other white flowers, which makes people feel relaxed and happy.

But did you know that in some rare cases, coffee trees also produce pink flowers? what is the reason for this difference?

In an interview with perfect daily grind, Oliveiro Guerreiro Filho, an expert in genetics and plant breeding at the Campinas Agricultural Research Institute in Brazil, said there would be a rare pink coffee tree, mainly consisting of two varieties.

One is caused by natural genetic variation in coffee plants, and studies have found that pink flowers are more likely to bloom in certain varieties, such as the natural low-cause variety Coffea racemosa and its hybrid offspring, Aramosa.

Rasmosa (also known as raceme coffee), native to southern Africa, is a coffee with very low natural caffeine content and one of the oldest varieties. It was first introduced to Brazil in 1954. Later, Campanas agricultural researchers hybridized it with Arabica and obtained the Alamosa variety through shape screening, which is currently grown only in some small estates in Brazil.

The average caffeine content of Arabica beans is about 1.2% Mel 1.6%, while that of Arabica coffee is only 0.7%. In turn, however, low-causal characteristics make coffee trees less resistant to pests, making it necessary for the variety to be planted at higher elevations. In the flowering season, Alamosa coffee trees produce rose-pink flowers and ripe fruits show purplish red.

Another coffee tree that produces clusters of pink flowers is called Purpurascens (purple leaves), which is caused by spontaneous mutations in the DNA sequence of plant chromosomes. Gene expression determines the color of the whole plant. The tender leaves, new stems and stipules of Purpurascens coffee trees are purple, while coffee flowers are beautiful pink. Coffee trees with Purpurascens mutants tend to have lower yields and are more vulnerable to pests, the researchers said.

For example, the landowner from El Socorro, Guatemala, discovered the purple leaves and pink flowers of Purpurascens coffee in his own Maraka Maracaturra seedlings in 2009, and then cultivated them separately. After the harvest, they felt that the mutant performed very well in the cup test, with blackcurrant and ripe plum acidity, so they used grafting technology to grow it commercially and won several subsequent Guatemala Excellence Cup awards.

Most coffee growers may never see pink flowers on coffee trees, or they may never touch them. But as producers and researchers continue to develop hybrids, we may see more coffee plants with pink flowers in the near future.

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