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- Researchers have traced the origins of Arabica coffee, the most popular type in the world.
- Using genes from coffee plants around the world, they discovered that it dates back to approximately 600,000 years ago.
- Arabica coffee dominates the market, accounting for more than 60 percent of global coffee consumption.
that coffee did you sip this morning? It is 600,000 years old.
Using genes from coffee plants around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world’s most popular type of coffee, known to scientists as Coffea arabica and to coffee lovers simply as “arabica.”
Researchers, hoping to learn more about the plants to better protect them from pests and climate change, discovered that the species arose about 600,000 years ago through natural interbreeding of two other coffee species.
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“In other words, before any human intervention,” said Victor Albert, a biologist at the University at Buffalo who co-led the study.
Arabica coffee beans are stored at a coffee plantation in Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala, May 22, 2014. Researchers have discovered that the world’s most popular type of coffee, known as arabica, emerged hundreds of thousands of years ago through the natural crossing of two other coffee species. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File)
These wild coffee plants originated in Ethiopia, but are believed to have been first roasted and brewed primarily in Yemen beginning in the 15th century. In the 17th century, Indian monk Baba Budan is said to have smuggled seven raw coffee beans back to his homeland from Yemen, laying the foundation for the global coffee conquest.
Arabica coffee, prized for its mild and relatively sweet flavor, now accounts for 60% to 70% of the global coffee market and is produced by brands. like starbucks, Tim Horton and Dunkin’. The rest is robusta, a stronger, bitter coffee made from one of the parents of Arabica, Coffea canephora.
To reconstruct the past of Arabica coffee, researchers studied the genomes of C. canephora, another parent called Coffea eugenioides, and more than 30 different Arabica plants, including an 18th-century sample (courtesy of the Natural History Museum in London) that the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus used to name the plant.
The study was published Monday in the journal Nature Genetics. Researchers from Nestlé, which owns several coffee brands, contributed to the study.
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The population of the Arabica plant fluctuated for thousands of years before humans began cultivating it, flourishing during hot, wet periods and suffering during dry periods. These difficult times created so-called demographic bottlenecks, when only a small number of genetically similar plants survived.
Today, that represents arabica coffee plants more vulnerable to diseases such as coffee rust, which causes billions of dollars in losses each year. Researchers explored the composition of an Arabica variety that is resistant to coffee rust, highlighting sections of its genetic code that could help protect the plant.
The study clarifies how arabica arose and highlights clues that could help safeguard the crop, said Fabián Echeverría, an advisor at the Center for Coffee Research and Education at Texas A&M University who was not involved in the research.
Exploring the past and present of arabica could provide insight into how to keep coffee plants healthy (and coffee cups full) for future mornings.
