The Crop Trust is a non-profit with a mission to safeguard the diversity of all crops. Coffee is among those most in need of protection. To preserve diversity the trust has launched a study that will help ensure the long-term conservation and availability of the world’s only international coffee collection in Turrialba, Costa Rica.
There are some 12,000 trees representing 11 coffee species at the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE).
For the past 70 years, the coffee collection has served the coffee industry well, especially in Central America, where all rust-resistant varieties can trace their origins to this 10-hectare field germplasm bank. Unfortunately, the CATIE collection is at risk, due to aging trees, insufficient funding, and no backup system. “Five years ago, our last inventory of the collection found that we’d lost more than 100 plants, corresponding to almost 40 different varieties of coffee,” said William Solano, who looks after the organization’s coffee collection.
“Given what’s happening to coffee diversity in the wild, if we lose an accession at a collection like CATIE’s, we could be losing it for good,” he said. The study is funded by Swiss pruning and cutting tools manufacturer FELCO.
Learn more: croptrust.org