Photo: RBG KEW / copyright
A ‘forgotten’ coffee plant that can grow in warmer conditions could help safeguard the beverage from climate change in the future.
Scientists predict that we could soon be drinking s tenophylla , a rare wild West African coffee that tastes like traditional coffee a rabies , but grows in warmer conditions.
As temperatures rise due to climate change it will become increasingly difficult to grow coffee.
Studies suggest that for 2050, approximately half of the land used in the world to grow high-quality coffee will be unproductive .
Finding a wild coffee that tastes good and is tolerant of heat and drought is “the holy grail of improving coffee, “said Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at Kew Gardens, London’s Royal Botanic Gardens.
” I have tried a lot of wild coffees and I can say that their flavors are not excellent, they do not taste like a rabies , so our expectations were quite low, “Davis told the BBC.
completely blown away by the fact that this coffee tasted amazing . And it has these other attributes related to its climatic tolerance: it grows and can be harvested in conditions of much higher temperatures than coffee to rabies “.
Coffea stenophylla is a species of wild coffee from West Africa that, until recently, believed extinct outside of Ivory Coast.
The plant was recently rediscovered in the wild in Sierra Leone , where it was historically grown about a century ago.
A small sample of grains from Sierra Leone and the Coast of Ivory was roasted and used to prepare beverage samples, which were then tasted by a panel of coffee connoisseurs.
More than 80% of the judges could not distinguish between s tenophylla and the most popular coffee in the world, to rabies , in blind tastings, researchers reported in a study published in the journal Nature Plants .
The scientists also modeled climate data for the plant, and noted that can potentially tolerate temperatures at least 6 ° C higher than coffee to rabies .
This year the first seedlings of s tenophylla . The goal is to begin assessing the potential of wild coffee with a view to safeguarding the future of high-quality coffee.
Davis hopes that one day it will be grown again in Sierra Leone on a large scale.
“This coffee is not going to be in coffee shops in the next two years, but I think that in five to seven years we will see it entering market as a niche coffee, as a high-value coffee, and then after that, I think it will be more common, ”Davis said.
The research was carried out in collaboration with the French research institute Cirad and the University of Greenwich, UK.
What is coffee a rabies?
Arabica beans are considered to have superior flavor. This coffee is grown in the mountains and represents more than 60% of world production.
T has limited resistance to climate change . Farmers are already experiencing the impacts of high temperatures and low or erratic rainfall.
Other threats to coffee production include price fluctuations, pests and diseases and extreme weather events.
Where is the coffee wild?
The vast majority of wild coffee grows in forests in Africa, including the island of Madagascar.
Beyond that continent, wild coffee is found in other tropical climates, such as parts of India, Sri Lanka, and Australia.
What types of coffee do we drink?
More than 100 types of coffee trees grow naturally in forests, but only a few are used for drinking.
The world coffee industry is dominated by two main coffee crops: to rabies ( Coffea arabica ) and r obusta ( Coffeea canephora ).
A third species: liberica ( Coffea liberica ) is cultivated throughout the world, but is rarely used for drinking.
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