Coffee News Why Coffee Is Dangerous

Astonishingly single

In a cafe in Tuliarva, Costa Rica, guests stand on the balcony of the restaurant, overlooking the lush hills opposite, and their drinks can only be replaced with white water or pineapple juice. This was the scene in March 2014, when about 20 people gathered at the Centre for Tropical Agricultural Research and higher Education (CATIE) in Turialva, including the world's top coffee researchers. The purpose of their visit is to discuss the uncertain future of coffee, the world's most popular beverage crop, in Central America.

The theme of the seminar was a very harmful agricultural disease: coffee rust (Coffee rust), which is called Roya in local Spanish. Fungus infects coffee leaves and causes rust, preventing it from getting the sunlight necessary to grow. In the past few years, about half of the about 1 million acres of coffee grown in Central America have been ravaged by rust and reduced coffee production in the region by about 20 per cent in 2012.

The spread of rust continues, and unfortunately, this is just one of many crises facing coffee crops in the context of global warming. Benoit Bertrand (Benoit Bertrand), a geneticist and coffee breeding expert at the French Centre for Agricultural Development (CIRAD) in the Turialva Cafe, told the audience: "most of the coffee varieties we now grow are not resistant to diseases and insect pests, nor to rising temperatures and other environmental threats caused by climate change." Once the coffee crop fails, the livelihood of local growers will not be sustainable. They will have to cut down coffee trees, plant other crops, and even sell their land to developers, followed by unemployment and environmental damage.

There is no doubt that Bertrand, with a blue sweater over his shoulder, looks more like a gentle French filmmaker than a scientist facing a petri dish all day. Indeed, because of the lack of genetic diversity, which is a key factor determining the survival of species, coffee can neither adapt to extremely hot climates nor resist diseases. Although the names of the exotic coffee items on the cafe menu vary widely-slightly sour Inyazi coffee, roasted coffee and Vietnamese coffee, and mellow Madagascar coffee, behind this difference, there is a startling fact: artificially grown coffee crops are homologous.

In fact, 70 per cent of the world's coffee belongs to the same breed-small fruit coffee (Coffea arabica). Different species, producing areas and roasting methods determine the variety of coffee tastes, but it also confuses people's correct understanding of the genetic history of coffee. Almost all the coffee we drink now has been introduced from Ethiopia in recent centuries, and there are only a handful of wild coffee varieties. Today, the difference between coffee crops in global plantations and wild coffee in Ethiopia is less than 1%.

Coffee is a forgotten child in the field of contemporary scientific research. In the coffee industry, there is no giant like Monsanto that can make a fortune by selling patented seeds. Although the absence of giants allows small growers in low-income countries to make a decent living by exporting coffee, it also means that funding for research in this area is bound to be stretched, leaving fragile coffee crops at the mercy of nature. Now, with regard to the urgent threat to the coffee growing industry, researchers have begun to use scientific means to fix it and save coffee.

Schilling's grand plan

Tim Schilling is a geneticist who lives in the French Alps. Today, he oversees the supervision of the World Coffee Research Organization (World Coffee Research). The World Coffee Research Organization is a non-profit organization funded by 30 coffee sellers of all sizes. Schilling is jokingly called the Indiana Jones of the coffee world. At the meeting in Turialva, Schilling, dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt, jeans and round black-rimmed glasses, bears a striking resemblance to Andy Warhol.

Scientists worry that climate change and rust will have a huge impact on the coffee industry. Coffee rust spreads easily in warm climates, and as temperatures rise, the fungi that cause the rust can spread to high elevations. In addition, changes in precipitation-- whether too much or too little-- can cause the fungus to multiply. Although spraying fungicides can inhibit rust, the price of this chemical agent is very high and can not eliminate those emerging strains.

In Schilling's view, the use of genetic means is the only feasible and long-term solution. First, he plans to start with adaptive mutations that already exist in the coffee gene pool, including small fruit coffee and other coffee varieties grown. Medium fruit coffee (Coffea canephora) is also known as robusta in the industry. Its advantage is that it is easy to grow, high yield, but bitter taste, so it is often used to make low-quality coffee. Medium fruit coffee and small fruit coffee are the only two species of coffee crops at present, but due to different planting areas, they also derived a number of varieties, and brought certain regional genetic differences. It's as if all kinds of different people on the earth now belong to the "Homo sapiens" species.

In Schilling's grand plan, a relatively simple study has begun, which is the introduction of coffee plants from different places, such as planting coffee trees from Congo in Brazil, or introducing coffee trees from Colombia to Honduras. Then see if these introduced coffee trees grow better than in their place of origin. 3After four years, the grower might say, "look! These coffee beans from India are more productive. " So they may plant more Indian coffee trees. At present, scientists have found 30 coffee plants with the highest yield from 10 countries in the study.

Taking advantage of genetic mutations in existing coffee crops may play a role in the short term, but overall, it is not enough to save coffee crops. Because the genetic difference between coffee crops grown for commercial purposes and small and medium fruit coffee is negligible. By contrast, the genetic differences between wild coffee are amazing. Many of these differential genes can be found in gene banks distributed around the world. Therefore, Bertrand hopes to use this genetic encyclopedia to make coffee crops more adaptive, more productive and more delicious at the same time.

Small gene bank

CATIE is the place where these genetic differences of coffee converge. Coming out of the seminar, walking through the campus of CATIE and walking along a section of dirt road, you will see a Spanish sign written in striking yellow letters: "Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Ethiopian Coffee Exhibition Park".

Nearly 10000 small fruit coffee trees are neatly planted on about 21 acres of land. It includes different varieties of coffee trees, all of which have been made on expeditions to Ethiopia since the 1940s, the earliest of which were obtained by the British during World War II, as well as in the 1960s. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and a French research team achieved the results.

Today, in addition to coffee from Ethiopia, the exhibition garden also has coffee varieties from other parts of Africa, such as Madagascar, as well as Yemen. It is worth noting that, unlike the seeds of other crops such as corn, coffee seeds cannot survive in ordinary sealed cold storage. Coffee seeds cannot be separated from the soil during introduction unless special freeze-drying preservation techniques are used. This is why the most important coffee gene bank in the world actually exists in the form of a coffee garden.

Bertrand's job is to select the right varieties from a gene pool such as the CATIE Coffee display Garden and cross to produce a whole new coffee plant. More than a decade ago, he crossed small fruit coffee with its wild relatives and developed a new coffee variety that could increase its yield by more than 40%. He is currently working with Schilling to select 800 coffee trees from CATIE and transport them to a laboratory in New York to sequence them, along with another 200 from coffee gene banks around the world. This information will help him evaluate useful genetic traits in each coffee tree.

Researchers are looking for genes that make coffee crops "stronger" to prevent rust infection and improve their drought and high temperature tolerance. To this end, Bertrand and Schilling are screening, Schilling said: "these coffee trees have a very high genetic difference." Their aim is to find as many good characters as possible from as few plants as possible. "the next thing is to use these plants to hybridize the coffee varieties that we expect to be delicious, high-yielding and resistant to all the diseases we know so far."

Search for supergenes

Schilling is confident that the above research will provide growers with better varieties of coffee, which means higher quality and better taste for coffee roasters and consumers. However, Schilling and his companions have a bigger ambition: to create an unprecedented combination of advantages of "artificial small fruit coffee", giving it both the delicious taste of small fruit coffee and the high yield of medium fruit coffee.

Schilling's plan is to go back to where it all started-re-hybrid small fruit coffee. Small fruit coffee was originally made from a cross between medium fruit coffee and Okinoides coffee (Coffea eugenioides). Now, the focus of the work is to find patrilineal varieties whose genetic diversity is much higher than that of traditional small fruit coffee. In order to achieve this goal, their vision can not be limited to the existing gene pool, they must return to nature, in the vast expanse of wild coffee to find those key unknown genes.

There are about 125 kinds of coffee on the planet, each of which produces genetic mutations far beyond the small number of samples in the gene pool, let alone those that have not yet been discovered. We just hope that researchers will be able to find these undiscovered species as soon as possible before they become extinct.

Aaron Davis (Aaron Davis) has been studying wild coffee since 1997. At first, he had no hope of finding a new variety. One day, Davis, who had not graduated from his doctorate, happened to meet a famous coffee taxonomist when he was having tea at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Qiu Gardens outside London, England. so Davis asked her about the species, origin and natural distribution of wild coffee crops. Unexpectedly, the expert gave him only one answer: "No one knows."

Soon after, Davis was commissioned by this expert to embark on a journey to find wild coffee. Over the next 15 years, he traveled to every corner of Madagascar. In this African island nation that can be called a treasure trove of wild coffee diversity, Davis has found a variety of coffee, many of which are brand new varieties previously known only to local residents.

It was in Madagascar that Davis found the largest and smallest known coffee fruit in the world, with the former being three times the size of a common variety and the latter only half the diameter of a thumbtack. He found two kinds of coffee that spread seeds through water rather than animals, and Samara coffee with folded ribbon fruit. He also discovered the new Anbongisis coffee (Coffea ambongensis), which has beans shaped like a brain.

In addition, Davis's findings show that wild coffee is widely distributed in the tropics, from Africa to Asia and even as far away as Australia. In Ethiopia, which is currently the main producer of small fruit coffee, some forests are densely planted with small fruit coffee trees of up to 8000 trees per acre. Davis believes that many of these wild coffee trees can be planted artificially.

However, like coffee crops, wild coffee faces many crises. 70% of wild coffee is at risk of extinction, 10% of which could disappear completely within 10 years. Land development is the biggest threat to wild coffee, with more than 80% of the forests in Ethiopia being cut down as early as the late 1990s. In 2007, Davis's team discovered a new variety of coffee in a remnant forest the size of a baseball field in Madagascar, where deforestation continues at an alarming rate. For wild coffee trees, as Davis described it, "climate change does not have a significant impact on the growth of wild coffee at all." Wild coffee, along with the environment in which it grows, is disappearing at an alarming rate.

Davis is concerned that researchers spend too much energy on coffee varieties that have been preserved, while other wild varieties that may contain more important genes are dying out or are becoming extinct because of human damage to the environment. "there is a thought among researchers,'We've found everything we need, and that's enough,'" he said. "but have they ever considered that without continuous exploration and research on wild coffee, how can we have such a rich coffee gene pool?"

The relevant policies implemented by the Government of Ethiopia are also worrying. As the origin of coffee, the country contains a large number of unique wild coffee populations, but the Ethiopian government has banned foreign researchers from collecting them. If we can obtain the genes of Ethiopian wild coffee, thereby enriching the coffee gene pool, it will benefit a lot from Schilling's "new artificial small fruit coffee" research. Wild coffee in Ethiopia may contain key genes that enhance the heat tolerance of coffee crops or increase yield per unit. Schilling urgently hopes that the country can relax its policy and lift the ban on these precious resources. At the same time, scientists will also make use of existing resources to actively carry out research work.

By studying the archives of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Davis found that residents of Uganda and other places have long recorded the use of wild varieties to make coffee. Although some coffee tastes hard to taste, they give off a familiar aroma when roasting coffee beans. Davis also mentioned, "A hundred years ago, there were some coffee varieties that had an excellent reputation." Restudying these early coffee crops may make them shine again, or help us develop better varieties. "

Race against time

When setting up the World Coffee Research Organization, Schilling received the help of the American Fine Coffee Association, and therefore received financial support from Green Mountain Coffee, Coffee Bean International and other enterprises. Shortly after the establishment of the World Coffee Research Organization, coffee rust swept through Central America. In response to the disaster, Schilling decided to hold a small meeting in Guatemala to discuss possible countermeasures. As soon as the meeting plan was announced, a large number of applications were received.

Schilling's meeting also attracted the attention of the United States Agency for International Development, which hopes that Schilling will apply for a research project on coffee rust. Because the collapse of the coffee industry in Central America could lead to an influx of immigrants into the United States, which is the concern of the United States government behind the United States Agency for International Development. The World Coffee Research Organization estimates that rust outbreaks in Central America in 2012 cost coffee growers as much as $548 million and caused 441000 jobs. If governments and research institutions continue to do nothing, the coffee industry in Central America could be completely destroyed by 2050.

Although during the rust crisis in 2012, some short-term emergency measures were taken, such as providing germicides and loan guarantees to coffee growers. However, Schilling believes that in the face of a series of threats such as rust, it is very necessary to establish a long-term coordination mechanism. Schilling's project, eventually funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), will provide growers with new coffee provenances that are more adaptable to climate and more resistant to diseases and pests through a high-tech breeding program.

The epidemic of rust is just a rehearsal of the threats facing the global coffee industry, where already fragile coffee crops will be vulnerable to emerging diseases under the influence of rising temperatures and extreme weather. At the CATIE seminar, Carlos Mario Rodriguez, Starbucks's head of global agricultural affairs, mentioned that Chinese coffee growers had found as many as five new types of rust in their crops. "in the past, rust did not affect coffee crops at high altitudes, but now the situation has changed." Rodriguez said.

To survive the crisis, coffee crops must be more adaptable. As Brett Smith, president of the North Carolina counter-Culture Coffee Company, puts it, the gene for choosing a coffee crop is like "a portfolio of securities with only a few stocks to choose from". Smith is full of confidence in Schilling and his research partners, even though the "battle for coffee" has only just begun.

Finally, the only doubt is whether the relevant research can be completed in time. "if these studies had been done 10 years ago, we would not have to face these thorny problems today." Reinhart, executive director of the American Fine Coffee Association, said, "now, if we don't get to work, time will be even more tight, and coffee may not wait for tomorrow."