Developing Climate-Smart Coffee Cultivars

With more than 2.2 billion cups consumed daily, coffee is a global social and cultural phenomenon. Some 100 million workers cultivate, harvest, process, roast, and brew all that java. But this coffee chain faces a critical challenge: Given projected climate changes, coffee production may fall as much as 80% by 2050, according to estimates.

The future of coffee production depends on accelerating the development of better varieties. In work recently published in The Plant Genome, researchers from the University of Florida and Instituto Capixaba de Pesquisa in Brazil drew attention to Coffea canephora (also called Robusta coffee) because it has a great yield, is more resilient to diseases, and presents a large phenotypic diversity.

By integrating genomics and classical quantitative genetics analyses, the team emphasized the importance of using genomic‐assisted breeding to maximize the genetic gains and demonstrated that a better understanding of the genetic architecture of complex traits can guide future breeding decisions.

Altogether, the team demonstrated that genomic‐assisted breeding applied to Coffea canephora is a promising strategy for developing climate‐smart coffee cultivars.