The dispute about the "Coffee Mother Tree" in the Netherlands

At present, coffee trees in Central and South America and Asia are derived from the two major varieties of Tibika and Bourbon in Yemen, and the "mother coffee tree" cultivated by the Dutch belongs to Tibika. In 1658, the Dutch defeated Portugal and colonized Sri Lanka and India's Malabar, where Arabs had long stolen Yamamoka coffee, which also became a coffee resource in the Netherlands. In the same year, the Dutch shipped the seeds of the "mother coffee tree" in the greenhouse to warmer Sri Lanka and tried to cultivate them on a large scale. Unexpectedly, the local farmers were too lazy and unwilling to grow coffee, and the coffee planting plan failed.

However, the Dutch did not give up. In 1696 and 1699, the Dutch East India Company 5 transplanted two batches of Tibika seedlings from Malaba, a dependency in western India, to Java for trial planting. Fortunately, Javanese farmers were very interested in planting and succeeded in one fell swoop, which started the coffee planting industry in the Dutch colony. In the sixth year of 17 ⊙, the Dutch proudly transported a Java coffee tree back to the greenhouse of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Amsterdam to cultivate offspring. It blossomed and bear fruit in 1713 and became the "mother coffee tree" of Europe.

Yes, the Coffee Mother Tree does have twins! Some scholars believe that Captain de Boek stole the mocha tree in 1616 and returned to the Netherlands to cultivate it, but another group of scholars believe that the Java coffee tree that ○ moved back to the Netherlands in six years is the mother plant. However, whether it comes first or later, the Mother Coffee Tree is a masterpiece of the Dutch, and it also belongs to the native species of Arabica, characterized by long oval beans and copper-brown top leaves, that is, Bronze-Tipped is ∮ ca. Mantenin, Blue Mountain and Hawaii Kona, which are familiar to Chinese, all belong to Tibica.

After a successful trial in Java, the Dutch extended their coffee fields to neighboring Sumatra and Sulawesi in 1718. In 1711, Java exported the first 450 kilograms of coffee beans to Europe. In 1721, exports from Java plus Sumatra and Sulawesi soared to 60,000 kilograms. By 1731, the Dutch East India Company was self-sufficient and stopped buying coffee from the Yemeni mocha, and Java coffee became a household name. In the competition of European powers to grow coffee, the Dutch took the lead, far ahead of France and Britain.