Millions of people around the world enjoy a daily cup of coffee; however, your daily dose of caffeine could be threatened because climate change is killing coffee plants, putting farmers' livelihoods at risk.
Inside the big, smoky greenhouses of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in the leafy West London suburbs, Aaron Davis is leading the research on coffee.
“Arabica coffee, our coffee of choice, provides us with around 60% of the coffee we drink globally. It's a delicious coffee, it's the one we love to drink. The other species is robusta coffee, which provides us with the other 40% of the coffee we drink, but that mostly goes into instant coffees and espresso blends," explains Davis.
The cultivation of Arabica and robusta coffee beans represents millions of livelihoods in Africa, South America, and Asia.
“These coffees have served us very well for many centuries, but due to climate change, they are facing problems,” says Davis.
"Arabica is a cool tropical plant, it doesn't like high temperatures. Robusta is a plant that likes even humid conditions, it likes heavy rain. And with climate change, rain patterns are changing." and is also experiencing problems. In some cases, yields are drastically reduced due to rising temperatures or reduced rainfall, but in some cases, as we have seen in Ethiopia, the harvest may fail and the trees die.
The solution could be growing deep in the forests of West Africa. There are about 130 species of coffee plants, but not all of them taste good. In Sierra Leone, Kew scientists helped identify a candidate, stenophylla, that grows in the wild.
FILE - Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and John Brima, head of research at the Sierra Leone Department of Forestry, study wild Coffea stenophylla plants in eastern Sierra Leone on December 7. 2018, in this photo published by The Royal Botanic Gardens on April 19, 2021.
"This is extremely heat tolerant. And it's an interesting species because it matches arabica in terms of its great flavor," says Davis.
Two other coffee species also show promise for commercial cultivation in a changing climate: liberica and eugenioides, which "have low yields and very small beans, but amazing flavor," according to Davis.
Some believe that the taste is far superior. At the 2021 World Barista Championships in Milan, Australian Hugh Kelly won third prize with his eugenioides espresso. Kelly remembered the first time he tried it on a remote farm in Colombia. "It was a coffee like I had never tasted before; when I tasted it, it was unbelievably sweet... I knew the sweetness and mild acidity were the bones of an amazing espresso," Kelly told the judges in Milan.
The researchers hope that Kelly's success could be the watershed moment for these relatively unknown beans.
The Botanic Gardens team is working with farmers in Africa on the commercial cultivation of the new coffees. Catherine Kiwuka of the Ugandan National Agricultural Research Organization, which is overseeing some of the projects, says there are still challenges ahead.
"What requirements do they need? How do we increase their productivity? Instead of being dominated by just two species, we have the opportunity to harness the value of other coffee species."
Substantial volumes of Ugandan coffee are expected to be exported to Europe this year. The researchers hope it will provide a sustainable income for farmers and an exciting new flavor for coffee drinkers.
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