New Robusta Variety Catalog Provides Industry Tool

Coffee professionals tend to know half a dozen or more varieties of arabica. But how many could name even a single robusta? Meanwhile industry interest in Coffea canephora is growing, thanks to its affordability, hardiness, and increasing cup quality.

A superb new catalog produced by World Coffee Research gives growers an excellent tool to use in selecting the right variety to plant. For each of 47 varieties, the catalog details more than 20 variables like yield potential, stature, bean size, nutrition requirements, lineage, susceptibility to pests/diseases, and more. It even profiles cup quality, making the catalog useful to roasters, buyers, and brands.

What's remarkable is the catalog’s excellent readability and user-friendliness: clear, concise texts; an uncluttered format; and smart graphics. The open-source guide can be accessed online via an interactive website that allows the data to be read via desktop or mobile device or printed in a customizable PDF. It's available in Spanish as well as English, and it's free.

World Coffee Research's goal is to support growers in making optimal decisions about varieties. The idea is to lower the risk associated with coffee farming by providing direct information to enable farmers and other planting decision-makers to make an informed choice about what varieties will grow best in particular environments.

Because the life of a coffee tree is 20­–30 years, the decision a farmer makes about which variety to plant has long-term consequences. A bad choice can lead to a huge cumulative loss. Conversely, the right decision can lead to a big gain. For example, a farmer in Uganda who successfully cultivates a healthy plant that is resistant to coffee wilt disease can earn 250% more than for planting a susceptible variety.

In contrast to the wide availability of data on arabica varieties, robusta farmers in particular have tended to lack access to transparent information about available varieties and how they differ. Robusta farmers typically sell into lower-value markets where variety differentiation is nonexistent.

It's important to note that robusta pollinates differently from arabica. The species requires that a grower plant more than one variety so as to attain successful pollination between varieties during simultaneous flowering. Because of this, farmers must cultivate a variety of clones that are complementary so as to enhance fruit production and quality.

These mixtures, which typically comprise officially released commercial varieties, are often distributed to farmers for planting with minimal transparency about which clones are included in the mix and their unique properties. The lack of comprehensive, up-to-date variety information and officially recommended planting patterns puts farmers at risk and perpetuates chronically low yields around the globe.

“Since our founding over ten years ago, World Coffee Research has worked to empower farmers by making tools available to choose the right varieties for their farms and their markets — varieties that deliver high yield and better-tasting coffee in the long term,” said chief executive officer Jennifer “Vern” Long. “And, now that robusta comprises 40% of the coffee produced and marketed globally, we saw the need to support farmers by creating this tool.”

World Coffee Research in 2016 launched a catalog profiling arabica varieties from around the world. At the time of its release, the arabica catalog was a first-of-its-kind resource and the only global compendium of information about available coffee varieties for farmers, buyers, and roasters. The resource has been viewed over 1 million times since its launch. It is a living document that continues to be updated, thereby supporting the goal of improve the accessibility of improved planting material for farmers around the world.

The new catalog provides an overview of robusta's history as a species, tracking it from its origins in central and western sub-Saharan Africa through its spread across Asia and Latin America to its cultivation today. The history provides a brief overview of the genetic diversity and conservation of robusta to help readers understand how well-differentiated the various populations of this species are.

Note that the genetic diversity of robusta coffee is much larger than that of arabica, and it is only just beginning to be explored by breeders and the industry at large. This catalog appears likely to help. Thank you, World Coffee Research!