NY University researchers explore the past of the coffee bean to create a high quality genome

• Published date: 17 April 2024
• Author: JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Researchers from the University at Buffalo declared that the key to growing coffee plants that can better resist climate change in the decades to come may lie in the ancient past. They have created what they say is the highest quality reference genome to date of the world's most popular coffee species, Arabica, unearthing secrets about its lineage that span millennia and continents

Their findings, just published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics under the title "The genome and population genomics of allopolyploid Coffea arabica reveal the diversification history of modern coffee cultivars," suggest that this species developed more than 600,000 years ago in the forests of Ethiopia through natural mating between two other coffee species. The study found that the number of this plant waxed and waned throughout Earth's heating and cooling periods over thousands of years before eventually being cultivated in Ethiopia and Yemen and then spread over the globe.

"We've used genomic information in plants alive today to go back in time and paint the most accurate picture possible of Arabica's long history and determine how modern cultivated varieties are related to each other," said the study's co-corresponding author, biology Prof. Victor Albert.

Coffee giants like Starbucks and Tim Hortons exclusively use beans from Arabica plants to brew the millions of cups of coffee they serve everyday, yet, in part due to a low genetic diversity stemming from a history of inbreeding and small population size, Arabica is susceptible to many pests and diseases and can be cultivated only in a few places in the world where pathogen threats are lower and climate conditions are more favorable.

"A detailed understanding of the origins and breeding history of contemporary varieties are crucial to developing new Arabica cultivars better adapted to climate change," Albert noted.

Arabica genome breakthrough

From their new reference genome, accomplished using cutting-edge DNA sequencing technology and advanced data science, the team was able to sequence 39 Arabica varieties and even an 18th century specimen used by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus to name the species.

"While other public references for Arabica coffee do exist, the quality of our team's work is extremely high," says one of the study's co-leaders, Patrick Descombes, senior expert in genomics at Nestlé Research. "We used state-of-the-art genomics approaches - including long- and short-read high throughput DNA...