What conditions do you need to grow coffee trees? Introduction to the process from coffee tree planting to coffee bean harvest

Coffee is a perennial evergreen shrub or small tree of Rubiaceae. It is a horticultural perennial cash crop with the characteristics of fast growth, high yield, high value and wide market.

Planting conditions of Coffee trees

Flower and fruit

Coffee is a perennial evergreen shrub or small tree of Rubiaceae. It is a horticultural perennial cash crop with the characteristics of fast growth, high yield, high value and wide market. Wild coffee trees can grow to a height of 5 to 10 meters, but coffee trees planted on the manor are often cut to a height of less than 2 meters in order to increase the amount of fruit and facilitate harvesting. Coffee tree opposite leaves are long oval, smooth leaves, the end of the branch is very long, few branches, and the flowers are white, open at the base of the petiole connecting the branch. The ripe coffee berries look like cherries and are bright red with sweet flesh and contain a pair of seeds, namely coffee beans (Coffee Beans). Coffee varieties can be divided into small-grain, medium-grain and large-grain species, the former contains low caffeine content and strong flavor, while the latter two have high caffeine content but poor flavor. At present, coffee sold in the world is generally made of small and medium seeds in different proportions, usually 70% of medium seeds, mainly caffeine, and 30% of small seeds, mainly for their aroma. Each coffee variety generally has a few to a dozen variants. Coffee is more resistant to shade and cold, but not resistant to light, drought and disease. Coffee contains nine kinds of nutrients, such as caffeine, protein, crude fat, crude fiber and sucrose. As a beverage, coffee is not only mellow and delicious, slightly bitter and sweet, but also can excite nerves and dispel fatigue. In medicine, caffeine can be used as an anesthetic, stimulant, diuretic and cardiotonic, as well as to help digestion and promote metabolism. The pulp of coffee is rich in sugar and can be used to make sugar and alcohol. Coffee flowers contain essential oils that can be used to extract high-grade spices.

Planting conditions of Coffee trees

The origin of the coffee tree is Ethiopia in Africa. In botany, coffee trees belong to the evergreen trees of the subgenus Rubiaceae, and coffee beans, commonly known as coffee beans, are the seeds of the fruit of coffee trees, just because they are shaped like beans, so they are called coffee beans.

Climate is the decisive factor for coffee cultivation. Coffee trees are only suitable for growing in the tropics or subtropics, so the zone between latitude 25 degrees south and north is the most suitable for growing coffee. This coffee production zone is generally referred to as "coffee belt" or "coffee area".

However, not all the land located in this area can cultivate good coffee trees. The ideal planting conditions for coffee trees are: a warm climate with a temperature of 15-25 ℃, and a rainfall of 1500-2000 mm throughout the year, and the rainfall time should be consistent with the flowering cycle of the coffee tree. Of course, in addition to the coordination of seasons and rainfall, there should be fertile soil. The most suitable soil for growing coffee is a well-drained, fertile soil containing volcanic ash.

In addition, although sunlight is an indispensable element for the growth and fruiting of coffee, too strong sunlight will affect the growth of coffee trees, so various producing areas will usually cooperate with the planting of some sunshade trees. generally plant higher trunk plants such as bananas, mangoes and legumes. The ideal altitude is 500-2000 meters above sea level. Therefore, the quality of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, which grows at an altitude of 8-1200 meters, is the best. It can be seen that the conditions for the cultivation of high-quality coffee are very strict: sunlight, rainfall, soil, air temperature, as well as the way coffee beans are harvested and the production process will affect the quality of coffee itself.

Flower and fruit

The first flowering period of the coffee tree is about three years old. the white five-petal tube-shaped flowers are filled with a faint scent of jasmine and the inflorescences are arranged in dense clusters. Flowers wither after two or three days of blooming and begin to bear fruit after a few months. The fruit is a drupe with a diameter of about 1.5cm. It turns green at first, then turns yellow gradually, and turns red when ripe. It is very similar to cherries, so it is called cherry coffee (Coffee Cherry). It can be harvested at this time.

Coffee fruit contains two seeds, namely coffee beans. The two beans are connected face to face with each other on one side of the plane. Each coffee bean has an outer membrane of pu, which is called silver skin, and its outer layer is covered with a yellow outer skin, called endocarp. The whole coffee bean is wrapped in a sticky pulp to form the coffee pulp, which is soft and sweet, with the outer shell.

Coffee trees take 3-5 years from planting to fruiting. 6-10 years of coffee trees are the most likely to bear fruit, about 15-20 years, is the harvest period. Coffee trees are usually bred in nurseries and grow into saplings, and then moved to coffee farms a year later, in full compliance with the way the Arabs planted and cultivated coffee trees. In the first four or five years of its growth, the coffee tree will continue to take root downward, develop its trunk upward, and develop its branches into an umbrella shape so that it can bear rich fruit in the future.

If the coffee is exposed to direct sunlight and the leaf temperature rises, the stomata will close, unable to absorb carbon dioxide, and the coffee tree will stop growing. Some taller trees will be planted next to the coffee tree to avoid being exposed to the sun for a long time. It is usually tropical cash crops such as bananas, betel nuts and so on. Banana and other cash crop trees not only shade, but also through photosynthesis, produce carbohydrates for coffee tree growth energy. As bananas grow fast and can be used as a by-product income, it can be said that coffee and bananas are good brothers of tropical cash crops.

Coffee trees can only grow in the tropics and subtropics. Coffee trees can grow in different climates, soils, elevations and rainfall in the middle of the "coffee belt". Coffee trees thrive in the hot and humid canyons and forest rainforests of Africa; it still produces high-quality coffee beans in cold, foggy, windy Central America; and in the Caribbean, where the climate is changeable, drought and torrential rain, it still blossoms and bears fruit. These factors are the secret that coffee beans have different flavors and a wide variety.

One of the characteristics of a coffee tree is that its fruit can bear fruit several times a year, and another is that flowers and fruits (also known as cherries) coexist at different stages of ripening. The whole coffee harvest is swayed by the vagaries of nature. If the fruit is too ripe, the beans in it will rot. If it is not ripe enough, the beans picked will not ripen by themselves. So bean pickers often go back to the same tree several times to find ripe fruit-it takes only 2 pounds to go back and forth several times, and a typical Arabica coffee tree produces less than 5 kilograms / 11 pounds of fruit in a year. can be made into about 1 kg / 2.2 pounds of coffee beans.

Most of the coffee harvesting in the world is selected by hand, so it is a labor-intensive and seasonally intensive process. Since there are both flowers and fruits on the same branch, the index finger and thumb of the collector are the best tools for collecting ripe berries. Scraping the fruit off a whole branch by hand or using an automated harvester can't tell ripe berries from green berries.

Coffee farmers who produce low-grade coffee beans like to use labor-saving methods to harvest beans, but in this way, because the quality is not pure, it impairs the flavor of coffee and lowers the grade of coffee. The way to pick coffee beans in some parts of Africa is to shake coffee trees, shake the fruit off the ground, and pick it up from the ground before the fruit is injured and rotten. Secondary coffee is produced in most parts of Brazil, where coffee is picked by plucking all the leaves, flowers, overheated and green fruits from the branches at a time, and it takes two years for such damaged coffee trees to return to normal.

Source: network