Low coffee diversity could lead to extinction

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Marked by pour-over coffee, vacuum brewing, and cold brew techniques, the so-called “third wave” of coffee is currently in full swing.

Despite the good news this coffee renaissance is for that industry, researchers have been finding that the world’s most popular coffee plant, Arabica, is currently under threat due to low genetic diversity.

In 2012, a study from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the United Kingdom used computer modeling to forecast that the amount of locations where wild Arabica coffee grows in Ethiopia, a major producer of beans, could drop by 85 percent by 2080. In a worst-case modeling scenario, the outcome was a drop of more than 99 percent.

“If we don’t do anything now and over the next 20 years, by end of the century, wild Arabica in Ethiopia could be extinct – that’s in the worst-case scenario,” study author Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at Kew, told BBC News.

Wake up and smell the coffee (or lack thereof)

That study sent shockwaves through the coffee industry and since then, Davis and his team have covered nearly 16,000 miles in Ethiopia, examining coffee production areas to look at the accuracy of their predictions.

“It’s important to see what’s happening on the ground, observing what influence climate change is having on coffee now, and talking to farmers. They can tell us what has happened, sometimes taking us back many decades, with several generations of farmers involved,” Davis said.

Timothy Schilling, executive director of the World Coffee Research institute (WCR), told the BBC that coffee is “an orphan crop,” which means it has been cultivated in countries unable to invest in agricultural research. As an example, Schilling said, coffee has around 40 plant breeders, as opposed to the thousands of corn, rice, or wheat breeders.

“Richer countries buy it, roast it and drink it, but have not paid for the agronomy. Only now is the industry waking up and seeing the need for it,” Schilling said.

“The coffee industry has realized no-one else is doing it – it’s going to have to be us,” he added. “But there is a big gap in our knowledge. For example we didn’t know the genetic base was so small.”

A lack of diversity in crops means that plants are more vulnerable to disease and other threats. For example, a fungus that causes a condition known as coffee leaf rust completely wiped out Sri Lanka’s coffee plantations in the late 1800s and countless plants in Central America in 2013. The UK researchers said this happens because coffee had not developed a resistance to the disease, relying completely on low temperatures at higher altitudes to protect it from the fungus.

Schilling noted that the WCR is currently working to develop more robust hybrids in the hopes of developing plants better able to stand up to disease and varied environmental conditions.

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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113397008/low-diversity-of-coffee-could-lead-to-extinction-052615/