top of page
Image by Rodrigo Flores

The coffee plant

must mate

only two coffees that we mainly drink

The coffee plant must mate

Every day, two billion cups of coffee are drunk worldwide. 25 million families depend on growing coffee for their livelihood. And in the last 15 years, coffee consumption has increased by 43%. This has resulted in the world's most popular coffee species, Arabica, being at risk of extinction.

Since there are over 100 types of coffee, it sounds a little strange that we would be so worried that a type of coffee is becoming extinct. It is as if of all coffee types, only two taste good enough to drink: Arabica and Robusta. Robusta is, as it sounds, a robust coffee plant, but unfortunately not particularly good. This leaves us with Arabica which has a round and full-bodied taste.

It is above all climate change that threatens the existence of Arabica. The arabica plant is sensitive to changes in precipitation and temperature, something that is constantly changing. A group of researchers from the British Royal Botanic Gardens has come to the conclusion that places where Arabica can grow will have fallen by 99.7% by 2080. Horrible numbers for all of us coffee addicts.

So what can we do about this? Drink less coffee?

What the research group from Great Britain is trying to do is to recreate the Arabica plant and make it more sustainable by creating a more durable plant. To understand this, let's rewind the band by about 15,000 years, when Arabica came into existence. It is quite a coincidence that Arabica came into existence at all. The Arabica plant is a hybrid between two different coffee plants, C eugenioides and C canephora, which have mated. This mating has only taken place once during these 15,000 years and has therefore only left us with one species of Arabica.

What the researchers will do now is find more durable varieties of these plants that once mated. Then you should try to pair these more durable varieties to get a more durable Arabia plant. It is important for you as a reader to understand that this is not some form of GMO, but only traditional crop and that this can take decades to implement.

In fact, the process of pairing the coffees that created Arabica has already begun and we at Caféskolan are waiting with excitement to see what they come up with, even though it may take decades.

Barista basic

  • Online course (15 moments)

  • Digital test

  • Certificate

  • Online course (15 moments)

  • Digital test

  • 2 days internship (learn to make coffee)

  • Practical test

  • Grade + diploma

From

bottom of page