Photo courtesy Oregon State University
Coffee plants too hot to flower.
Short-term heat waves can stunt the flowering of arabica plants, a recent university study indicates. And, no flowering means no fruit is produced.
The study by the College of Forestry at Oregon State University showed that Coffea arabica plants were not able to produce flowers when subjected to short heat waves. The study was designed to see how leaf age and heat duration affected the plants’ recovery from heat stress. It was found that younger leaves were especially slow in recovering compared to older, more mature leaves. No plants in the stress test produced flowers or fruit.
“This emphasizes how sensitive Coffea arabica is to temperature,” said lead author Danielle Marias, a plant physiologist with the university’s department of forest ecosystems and Society. “No flowering means no reproduction which means no beans, and that could be devastating for a coffee farmer facing crop failure.
“Heat is very stressful to the plants and is often associated with drought,” she said. “However, in regions where coffee is grown, it may not just be hotter and drier, it could be hotter and wetter, so in this research we wanted to isolate the effects of heat.”
Results of the research were recently published in Ecology and Evolution.
Learn more: http://bit.ly/2psvTSB