Coffee Faces an Innovation Crisis… World Coffee Research Takes Action
As agricultural innovation accelerates globally, data from the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) reveals a significant gap in coffee variety development compared to other crops. While the number of registered apple varieties stands at 5,342, coffee lags far behind with only 121 registered varieties, reflecting a 48-fold delay in coffee breeding progress.
The coffee sector faces increasing challenges, including climate change, pests, and agricultural diseases, all of which threaten global production sustainability. Unlike crops such as apples, which have benefited from continuous breeding programs, coffee production still relies on a limited number of traditional varieties, making it more vulnerable to environmental and economic risks.
In response to this stagnation, World Coffee Research (WCR) has announced a strategic plan to double the number of coffee varieties over the next decade by adopting modern breeding techniques to develop more resilient and efficient varieties. These efforts aim to produce new coffee varieties with enhanced traits, including greater climate resilience, higher yields, improved resistance to diseases and pests, and superior cup quality.
As part of this initiative, pre-commercial field trials for first-generation hybrid (F1) coffee varieties will be launched in 2024 in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Peru, in collaboration with specialized partners to evaluate their real-world performance.
To further accelerate innovation in the coffee sector, World Coffee Research has partnered with Cornell University, backed by $5 million in funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This collaboration, under the “Coffee Improvement Program,” aims to speed up the development of new climate-resilient coffee varieties, ensuring the sustainability of coffee production and helping farmers adapt to increasing challenges.
With growing environmental and economic pressures on the coffee industry, developing new, more adaptable coffee varieties has become an urgent necessity. Through the efforts led by World Coffee Research, the industry may witness a transformative shift in coffee farming that enhances productivity, improves quality, and secures the future of coffee as one of the world’s most significant agricultural commodities.
