Our arabica is quietly retreating and our shade is thinning. The rescue has been hiding in our own breeding history, and in forests we are still cutting down.
Great read. Like you said it is so important to look to wild relatives for finding the traits that ultimately give a good cup of coffee. As well as to the process that comes after the breeding of new resilent varieties.
Thank you, that is kind. You have caught the heart of it. The hopeful part is that some wild relatives still make a lovely cup, so we may not have to choose between coffee that survives and coffee worth drinking. And you are right, breeding is only half the journey. The rest happens between the tree and the cup.
Marvellous historical narrative, Dr Santhosh Eapen, on Arabica coffee introduction and its cultivation in the niche agro-climate of Kodagu that is challenged by climate change, vanishing shade tree cover and fight against biotic stresses due to very narrow genetic base. Coffee growers fight against odds and wait for richer harvest year when the price fall becomes the culmination of all tragedies. Brewing Robusta coffee is with full of pains and tribulations in the wake of severe competition from global coffee markets and coffee blends.
Thank you sir, you clearly know this crop and its growers.
If I may pick up your thread, the history was only my way in. The point I wanted to press is the urgency. That narrow genetic base is not a curiosity, it is a live vulnerability, and climate change is testing it faster than our breeding can answer. You have named the grower's cruel arithmetic exactly. But beneath the price pain sits a slower risk. Without wider genetics and conserved wild relatives, even the good years get harder to reach.
The economics are brutal. The biology is the deadline.
Great article Santhosh! Keep writing these snippets.
Great read. Like you said it is so important to look to wild relatives for finding the traits that ultimately give a good cup of coffee. As well as to the process that comes after the breeding of new resilent varieties.
Thank you, that is kind. You have caught the heart of it. The hopeful part is that some wild relatives still make a lovely cup, so we may not have to choose between coffee that survives and coffee worth drinking. And you are right, breeding is only half the journey. The rest happens between the tree and the cup.
Marvellous historical narrative, Dr Santhosh Eapen, on Arabica coffee introduction and its cultivation in the niche agro-climate of Kodagu that is challenged by climate change, vanishing shade tree cover and fight against biotic stresses due to very narrow genetic base. Coffee growers fight against odds and wait for richer harvest year when the price fall becomes the culmination of all tragedies. Brewing Robusta coffee is with full of pains and tribulations in the wake of severe competition from global coffee markets and coffee blends.
Thank you sir, you clearly know this crop and its growers.
If I may pick up your thread, the history was only my way in. The point I wanted to press is the urgency. That narrow genetic base is not a curiosity, it is a live vulnerability, and climate change is testing it faster than our breeding can answer. You have named the grower's cruel arithmetic exactly. But beneath the price pain sits a slower risk. Without wider genetics and conserved wild relatives, even the good years get harder to reach.
The economics are brutal. The biology is the deadline.