We all love coffee for a lot of reason which cannot be denied. We love it for its taste, smell, color, texture, and overall its ability to keep us awake when we have a lot of work to do. For that last ability, we need to give it to coffee because it has been our closest ally in time past and now helping us to get through those unpaid hours, and survive through those terrible meetings with bosses, associates, and partners, more so, it is a very good friend against hangovers but then we might lose this friend and ally of ours very soon.
Three things are affecting our dear coffee and they are able to send them extinct if we do not do something about them as soon as possible. Coffee pests, Coffee Leaf Rust (a fungus disease), and global warming. These three effects are possibly going to wipe out about 60% of all coffee by the year 2050 but this will be a huge problem for us because about 2 billion cups of coffee is consumed around the world every day with over 500 billion dollars in market size and supporting over 100 million farmers and families.
Unlike what you might think that there are only two types of coffee bean species in the world, there are about 130 known coffee species in the world but the coffee we consume come from only two types of coffee around the world, Coffea arabica and Coffea Cenephora (Robusta). That overpriced one you pay for that gives you that tasty satisfaction and can be done into different style and milk design is Arabica and you just love it while the one found in your everyday instant coffee is Robusta.
Although both are facing climate change issues, Arabica is suffering more and is facing more threat on the issue and this is because it is highly sensitive to rise in temperature and its production has been dropping over the years and will continue to drop since temperature keeps increasing, pest attack is high, and disease keeps attacking. This has led scientists to look into other species of coffee like Coffea Stenophylla which was a long lost bean rediscovered in Sierra Leone, and Coffea liberica in Uganda since they are coffee species that are fighting climate change.
Stenophylla was consumed int eh 19th and 20th century Europe but suddenly it disappeared until it was seen again in Sierra Leone. Some say it has a better taste than Arabica but I haven't had a taste so I might not be able to judge that. Asides the taste, its ability to withstand high temperature and still survive is something that scientist are interested in since it grows in lowlands which is a hotter place and not tropical regions where it is not that hot that Arabica is grown. Another Impressive thing about the specie is its ability to resist Coffee leaf rust, the fungi sending our current favorite coffee species to the grave.
Scientists are looking into stenophylla since it tastes great, able to resist disease, and can withstand high temperature but they still have to deal with the issue of yield because its yield is quite low. So there is a believe that it would become a high value niche coffee at least in the start while scientists look into how they can increase the yield of the specie without affecting it.
Asides Stenophylla, there are over 100 species of coffee known, so should we keep battling with Arabica and Robusta in a time when climate change and diseases are killing them very fast or should we switch to better alternatives out of the 100s that are surviving in the wild. Over time, looking into the about 130 species available might even be the solution we need to help solve the current problem we are facing as in the gene of one of these crops can be answers to our current coffee challenge where one of them could be pest resistant, flood resistant, drought resistant, disease resistant, climate resistant, and fungus resistant. So a lot of research has to be done and they must all be looked into with care so we do not lose them to extinction as well.
Reference
https://stories.uq.edu.au/research/2022/coffee-is-going-extinct/index.html
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/coffea
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/02/many-coffee-species-threatened-with-extinction/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/food-science/coffee
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9824350/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9024902/
https://bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppa.13833
https://www.iomcworld.com/open-access/the-effects-of-climate-change-on-the-pests-and-diseases-of-coffee-crops-in-mesoamerica-25335.html
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/01/coffee-in-trouble-60-of-wild-coffee-species-threatened-with-extinction/
https://specialprojects.sprudge.com/?p=509
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11722797/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/coffea-liberica
https://www.nparks.gov.sg/florafaunaweb/flora/2/8/2820
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