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Protecting the origins of coffee to safeguard its future

Nature Plants volume 3, Article number: 16209 (2017) Cite this article

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Global demand for coffee is constantly rising while the security of its production is increasingly threatened by disease and a changing climate. Is the genetic diversity of coffee in Ethiopia, its site of origin, robust enough to provide solutions to these challenges?

According to the United States Department of Agriculture's annual statistics, humans currently consume more than 9 million tonnes of coffee each year1. This number has increased by more than 50% over the last 20 years, and the International Coffee Organisation's trade statistics show that our appetite for this energizing bean has continued to rise independent of the world's financial downturns2. With widespread economic development in Asia and Latin America this trend is likely to continue, at least into the near future. Such high demand raises an obvious question. Should we be worried about the supply? Recent consecutive years of global surplus and the current rebound in Brazilian production might suggest not, but the narrow genetic base of coffee in production, climate change, increased risk of future drought, and regional pest outbreaks all continue to raise concern. Here we discuss how protecting populations of wild arabica coffee has the potential to provide solutions to these problems, and how more focused efforts to do so might help us to ensure long-term viability of the industry and the continued supply of this most favoured beverage.

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Figure 1: Planning ahead.

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Affiliations

  1. Zia Mehrabi is at the Lui Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z, Canada.

    Zia Mehrabi

  2. Philippe Lashermes is at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), BP 64501, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France.

    Philippe Lashermes

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  1. Zia Mehrabi
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  2. Philippe Lashermes
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Correspondence to Zia Mehrabi.

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Mehrabi, Z., Lashermes, P. Protecting the origins of coffee to safeguard its future. Nature Plants 3, 16209 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.209

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