New Wild Coffee Variety Discovered in Africa: Hope for Enhanced Heat Resistance in Arabica Coffee Varieties

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A recent research report from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research indicates that climate change will lead to a decline in both the yield and quality of specialty coffee beans in Ethiopia. To ensure that the global coffee supply chain can adapt to the pace of climate change, coffee cultivation researchers are continuously searching for unknown coffee varieties for research analysis, hybrid cultivation, and other efforts, hoping that coffee varieties can adapt to climate change themselves while also producing high-quality coffee fruits.

On April 19th, Aaron Davids, an expert from the Royal Botanic Gardens, published a research report titled "Arabica-like flavour in a heat-tolerant wild coffee species" in the top international academic journal "Nature Plants."

The research report shows that researchers discovered a little-known wild coffee variety in the tropical rainforests of Sierra Leone, Africa. The leaves of this wild variety appear narrower compared to Arabica leaves, so researchers named this wild variety Coffea stenophylla (narrow-leaf coffee). Through research, it was found that narrow-leaf coffee has heat tolerance and can better resist the impacts of heavy rainfall, and its flavor is similar to high-quality Arabica coffee beans. This discovery of wild varieties will help cultivate coffee tree varieties that can adapt to the impacts of climate change while producing high-quality coffee beans.

Aaron Davids analyzed in the research report that this wild coffee variety is unique to Guinea, Sierra Leone, and the Ivory Coast, and was exported to Europe before the 20th century. Many historical documents show that narrow-leaf coffee has excellent aroma. It wasn't until the emergence of the Robusta variety in the early 20th century that narrow-leaf coffee began to be forgotten. Subsequently, no sensory information about narrow-leaf coffee was published, and it was considered extinct in Guinea and Sierra Leone before being rediscovered in Sierra Leone in 2019.

After narrow-leaf coffee was rediscovered in Sierra Leone in 2019, researchers began cultivating the narrow-leaf coffee variety in 2020 in the Mascarene Islands of Réunion (originally from Ivory Island). After obtaining samples of narrow-leaf coffee beans, standard sensory evaluation comparisons were conducted with two Arabica coffee samples and one Robusta coffee sample. It was found that narrow-leaf coffee has a similar flavor profile to high-quality Arabica coffee.

In addition to sensory comparisons, Aaron Davids led his team to simulate the climate adaptation capabilities of the narrow-leaf coffee variety. It was found that the narrow-leaf coffee variety can grow under the high-temperature conditions that Robusta varieties can adapt to, and even higher temperatures, with an average tolerable temperature reaching 24.9°C, which is at least 6°C higher than the tolerable temperature for Arabica coffee varieties. This research report reflects the potential for improving the ability of Arabica coffee varieties to adapt to climate change.

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