This is the second premium coffee brand launched by TCPL as it plans to strengthen its presence in the coffee market in India.
Food and beverages, which primarily include tea, are two of the strong pillars for TCPL, which took over the consumer facing businesses of Tata Chemicals two years ago. Telegraph picture .
Tata Consumer Products Ltd is going to launch American gourmet coffee brand Eight O’Clock in India next week, 15 years after it acquired the business in the US. TCPL will sell the coffee directly to consumers in India, who can place orders online and get them delivered home.
The Tatas had bought the company, the fourth largest in the roasted and grounded category of coffee in the US, for about Rs 1,015 crore from Gryphon Investors in 2006. Apart from the US, the 102-year old Eight O’Clock coffee brand is also available in Canada and Europe.
This is the second premium coffee brand launched by TCPL, which has brought Starbucks to India through a joint venture, as it plans to strengthen its presence in the coffee market in India.
“I am happy to say that Eight O’Clock coffee will be launched in the D2C (direct-to-consumer) segment next week,” Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons and TCPL, told shareholders at the 58th annual general meeting.
The coffee business in the US grew 7 per cent in volume and 9 per cent in value (constant currency) in 2020-21, Sunil D’Souza, managing director & CEO of the company, later said. Eight O’clock Coffee Ltd, USA had reported a revenue of Rs 1,293 crore in the last fiscal and a profit of Rs 145 crore. The USA is the largest coffee market in the world, estimated at $11 billion.
Earlier this year, TCPL launched Sonnets by Tata Coffee, a premium range of roast and ground coffee, again in the D2C segment.
Responding to a shareholder on the way forward in coffee, the chairman said: “In all our portfolio we are really pushing (for) very strong distribution and market share gain, you are already seeing market share gain in tea and coffee is a long way to go but there is a big opportunity. We will definitely look at significant growth in this segment.”
Food and beverages, which primarily include tea, are two of the strong pillars for TCPL which took over the consumer facing businesses of Tata Chemicals two years ago. Apart from salt, its portfolio now includes pulses, spices, ready-to-cook items, mineral water, and breakfast cereals.
“When we did the integration we had committed synergies of Rs 100-150 crore in 18-24 months. We remain well on track to meet, if not exceed, the quantum and the timing of the synergies that we committed,” D’Souza said during the meeting.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Online / Home>Business / by The Telegraph Correspondent, Calcutta / June 26th, 2021
The company is eyeing the Rs 100 crore artisanal coffee market.
Tata Consumer Products Ltd (TCPL) has introduced a premium roasted and ground coffee under the Sonnets brand targeting urban and increasingly discerning coffee drinkers in India. With this launch, the company is eyeing the Rs 100 crore artisanal coffee market .
The TCPL’s move marks its maiden foray into the Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) market. It will let the company tap a growing number of buyers shopping online, especially during the pandemic when most are cooped indoors and unable to visit cafes and coffee shops.
Puneet Das, President, Packaged Beverages, India & South Asia, Tata Consumer Products Limited, said, “The user can choose the roasting level, grounding and flavors of the coffee which gets delivered to the doorstep of the customer via our delivery channels. We are leveraging both premiumization and home delivery trends through this launch.”
The coffee is produced in Tata Coffee-owned estates. The consumer can choose his preferred roast type from between a light, medium, and a dark roast option, and could also suit his brewing preference and opt for either a filter coffee or a French press grind.
Tata Consumer Products will be expanding the offering to gourmet stores in metro cities as it scales up in the segment.
“Our ambition is to be seen as a serious coffee player just like we have equity in the market with Tata Tea. We aim to have a sizable share in the market as we grow,” Das added.
As the coffee culture evolves, the company will also evaluate new coffee variants like green coffee in India.
source: http://www.indianretailer.com / The Indian Retailer / Home> News / by Vaishnavi Gupta, Features Writer / June 03rd, 2021
Coffee leaf rust on young coffee bushes in Rwanda. An expert advises farmers to grow the crop under shade to provide a conducive environment for a parasite that could control the leaf rust disease. Copyright: CABI
Nairobi :
Coffee farmers should grow the crop under shade to provide a conducive environment for a parasite that could control the fungal disease leaf rust, an expert says.
Coffee leaf rust, caused by the fungus Hemileia vastatrix, is characterised by small yellow spots on upper leaf surfaces and orange powdery lesions on the underside of leaves. Infected leaves eventually drop off, lowering the yield and quality of the crop.
“Shade also creates a conducive environment for the coffee leaf rust hyper-parasite and we need to maximise this potential.”
Beyene Zewdie, Stockholm University
But a study conducted in Ethiopia considered the origin of Arabica coffee, known scientifically as Coffea arabica, shows that a natural enemy that grows on top of leaves infected by the disease could be key to helping farmers fight it.
“The rust is a global challenge for coffee production,” says Beyene Zewdie, a co-author of the study and post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences at Stockholm University, Sweden, adding that it reduces coffee yields by up to 30 per cent.
According to the study published in Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment this month (1 May), researchers analysed both the rust and a fungus that attacks it called Lecanicillium lecanii. Observations were carried out from 2017 to 2019 during the wet and dry seasons in Southwestern Ethiopia.
“We found that coffee leaf rust was more severe during the dry season whereas the hyperparasite [parasite whose host is also a parasite or L. lecanii] was more severe during the wet season in two out of three years,” says the study. “The rust incidence increased with management intensity while the hyperparasite was more common under less intensive management.”
Zewdie says the research could help shed light on the relationship between the rust and the hyperparasite, and to manage the two.
“We also found a slight variation in the environmental requirement of the rust and the hyperparasite,” Zewdie tells SciDev.Net. “The rust can thrive in low moisture conditions whereas the hyperparasite favours areas characterised by moist and shaded habitats.”
Zewdie says most farmers in the study area perceive coffee leaf rust as a less important disease because although severe coffee leaf rust infestation leads to leaf-drop, coffee shrubs normally get back the leaves during the next wet season.
But he cautions that the loss of leaves can have a negative effect on the performance of the plant, and says shade would help mitigate the damage.
“Coffee needs shade and growing the crop under shade could buffer the microclimate around the coffee shrubs,” he tells SciDev.Net. “Shade also creates a conducive environment for the coffee leaf rust hyperparasite and we need to maximise this potential to make use of the capacity of the hyperparasite to suppress the rust in areas where the two interacting species co-occur.”
Bernard Mukiri Gichimu, a senior lecturer at Kenya’s University of Embu, Department of Agricultural Resource Management, who was not involved in the study, says that the findings could be important for farmers.
“The discovery of L. lecanii as a hyperparasite against the coffee rust fungus in a natural environment is a major breakthrough that may have a significant contribution in the management of the coffee leaf rust,” says Gichimu. “With climate change, the disease has become even more damaging … even in areas that were hitherto known to be less prone to the disease.”
Mukiri adds that using the natural enemy to fight the disease may be preferable to fungicides which can fail to control the disease either due to poor quality or handling or resistance of the disease-causing agent to fungicide.
“Reduced use of fungicides will also reduce environmental pollution which will be beneficial to the non-target organisms and safe to both the farmers and coffee consumers,” he says.
This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
source: http://www.scidev.net / Sci Dev Net / Home> Agriculture> News / by Nelson Mandela Ogema / May 24th, 2021
The coffee tree flowering process begins in late March ahead of the rainy season. The process takes between three to four days. (Supplied)
The coffee tree flowering process begins in late March ahead of the rainy season
Jeddah :
Coffee farms in the mountainous governorates of the Jazan region were covered in white after the flowering of the coffee trees, exhibiting signs of abundant production during this year’s season.
Coffee production is an important economic sector in the region, and enjoys special care by the Kingdom’s leadership. It is part of the Jazan region’s heritage, and is a crucial source of income for the residents of the mountainous areas, which are the homeland of the Khawlani coffee beans, whose production has increased by 70 percent in recent years.
The Saudi Press Agency’s camera caught pictures of the agricultural terraces in Al-Dayer Bani Malik blossoming with white coffee flowers that have a wonderful smell among the magnificent backdrop of the mountainous landscapes.
The coffee tree flowering process begins in late March ahead of the rainy season. The process takes between three to four days.
The flowering process is completed and coffee beans are formed and enter a six-month period until being harvested. This is considered a crucial period, as the coffee trees need to be irrigated with rainfalls in a timely way, while receiving adequate care from the farmers.
The flowering period is critical as it provides the farmers with an indicator about the volume of crops, according to the strength or weakness of the trees and the intensity of flowers on the branches, which entails further consideration by farmers, to ensure having abundant crops during harvest.
source: http://www.arabnews.com / Arab News / Home / by SPA / May 21st, 2021
Launched 3 years ago, Levista is eyeing expansion in south India, Mumbai and Delhi
S. Shriram, vice-president-sales and marketing at Levista
Coorg in Karnataka, is among the foremost coffee growing regions in India. SLN, a three-decade old coffee plantation company in the region is now aiming to grab a slice of the Rs 2,200-crore annual packaged coffee market, which is dominated by big players like Nestle (Nescafe), Hindustan Unilever (Bru) and Tata Coffee.
SLN launched its own brand of coffee called Levista three years ago and has ever since expanded to 40,000 retail outlets, predominantly in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. It has now set its sights on expanding across other markets, starting with the rest of south India.
“Of the Rs 2,200 crore market annually, over 80 per cent of the coffee consumption happens in the five southern states and Union territories. Therefore, we aim to reach a significant market share here rather than being sparsely spread all over the place,” S. Shriram, vice-president sales and marketing at Levista, told THE WEEK.
“At the moment, we have a deep presence in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. We launched our coffee in Goa in February and business is growing steadily. We will be entering the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana market by Sankranti and will penetrate deeper in there. Kerala will follow next.”
The company has the markets of Mumbai and Delhi-National Capital Region on the radar, too, however, it has not finalised a launch date yet, added Shriram.
Levista is also available on online platforms, including Amazon and it is also scaling up on other e-commerce platforms to reach a wider audience.
“Players like Big Basket have also aided our brand coverage, as has Flipkart. We have been recently on boarded through Udaan that reaches small retailers as well as hyperlocal players MilkBasket,” said Shriram.
While south India has a strong tradition of filter coffee, the rest of the country has largely been a tea drinking market. However, things have started changing with penetration of cafes like Cafe Coffee Day and Starbucks in the last decade. International coffee brands like Lavazza are also expanding in the country, buoyed by rising coffee consumption here.
“There is a huge scope for us to grow. The coffee market has been growing steadily. Out of home coffee consumption through cafes has already hit a pan-India presence and thanks to this familiarity, more new consumers are sipping coffee at home, through packaged coffee,” noted Shriram.
Levista’s parent SLN currently has a capacity upwards of 50,000 metric tonne per annum, and Shriram says the company will be able to produce enough coffee for the domestic market as well as for exports.
Talking of exports, the brand is already present in Singapore, Malaysia, Middle East, Maldives and Sri Lanka, reaching out to the south Indian consumers in these markets. The company intends to have a larger international presence next year, added Shriram.
source: http://www.theweek.in / The Week / Home> News> Business / by Nachiket Kelkar / November 20th, 2020
Raghunath Rajaram and Namisha Parthasarathy are trying to simplify coffee with a radical approach that involves reinventing the flavour wheel and learning about coffee’s colonial hangover.
Ārāmse Coffee started out as a small in-person gathering organised by the duo in Mysuru in August 2019. (Cottonbro, Pexels)
We enjoy coffee from around the world, but fail to see beyond labels and brand names into the world of cultural identity and the farms and roasteries that work behind the scenes to bring us our daily cup of joy. It’s a topic that Raghunath Rajaram and Namisha Parthasarathy, a couple that co-founded coffee subscription company Ārāmse Coffee, spoke eloquently on coffee’s best brand ambassador James Hoffmann’s YouTube channel a month ago when the latter opened his channel to content creators.
The Beginning
Ārāmse Coffee started out as a small in-person gathering organised by the duo with coffee lovers in Mysuru to understand the growing speciality coffee scene in August 2019. These were more informative for Rajaram who confesses that he used to drink filter coffee “with milk along with three spoons of sugar” before his wife introduced him to good coffee while they were staying in Shoreditch in East London. “That, along with an introductory class to the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) gifted by Namisha sent me down the coffee rabbit hole,” he says laughing.
When the couple came on a visit to India in 2019, the idea was to take up yoga but they landed up creating coffee workshops in Mysuru. “We started six-person workshops featuring two roasters and two different types of brewing. It was a tech-free way to spend half a Sunday and learn more about coffee,” Rajaram says about the beginning of Ārāmse Coffee.
Soon, the pandemic hit and the team had to quickly pivot from in-person meetings to something else. They went about it in two ways. First was to recreate the south Indian filter that Rajaram has grown up drinking since childhood and a prototype of which they are expecting to showcase at The London Coffee Festival later this year or in early 2022. The second was to create a community of coffee lovers online by starting coffee videos and later branching out to coffee products and a coffee subscription package to generate revenue. They are currently focussed on scaling up their subscription service and adding more content whilst in India.
Rajaram is especially happy with the direction of the coffee subscription model. “It’s a recommendation-based subscription that we offer through various roasters. We match the MRP so you are not overpaying for each subscription,” he explains. With a coffee experience tailored to individual palates and that can be further customised with ‘My Coffee Journey’ by the user, Rajaram says the system has been custom coded to scale, with the recommendation-based technology getting better with each order as it learns more about the user’s palate.
Raghunath Rajaram and Namisha Parthasarathy of Ārāmse Coffee.
The Conundrums
Whilst creating content and working on their own filter, the couple were also keen on exploring the impact of colonialism on coffee in a producing nation like India.
The couple is flummoxed by the fact that despite being the seventh-largest producer of coffee in the world, we still bulk produce and send some of our best beans to Europe and other countries. “Historically, Indian coffee has largely been bulk processed, white labelled and exported to countries like Italy, Germany and Belgium,” they say.
Parthasarathy is, in fact, working on a project for her certification in the SCA Sustainability Program that explores the localisation of coffee flavour wheels as one small way of making coffee more inclusive, especially for producers in the Global South. It’s a topic that leads to the SCA Flavour Wheel.
The Flavour Wheel
Globally, the SCA has a flavour wheel that roasters, baristas and everyone in the business refers to while describing any coffee. Rajaram says, “The problem is that the flavour wheel was largely developed in the US and UK and this could lead to some implicit biases as to what flavours are desirable and which aren’t. Tasting notes like Earthy, which are very sought after in the subcontinent, would make coffee folks in the Global North cringe as this is considered a flaw amongst those circles.”
According to the couple, having a localised flavour wheel for each place would make coffee a lot more inclusive and accessible. “We have our own unique fruits and spices that could easily make their way into these wheels.”
It’s a topic that sounds familiar to Debabrat Mishra, founder of Koraput Coffee, that’s working with tribals in Odisha to make coffee beans. According to Mishra, the wheel needs new flavours that have not been considered until now. “Our coffees have notes of green chilli, white pepper and even gooseberry because of cross microbe activity between the trees and coffee plants in Koraput. The SCA flavour wheel and way of scoring coffees that prioritises automation over traditional methods needs to change,” he says.
The SCA needs to acknowledge the shortcomings in its flavour wheel and adopt a country-specific approach, which is unlikely; or, every country could create a flavour wheel that best represents the coffee flavours found in its beans, which is too ambitious. So technically nothing can be done at the moment, except more education amongst coffee lovers.
source: http://www.lifestyle.livemint.com / The Mint / Home> Mint Lounge> Food> Drink / by Priyanko Sarkar / May 03rd, 2021
With temperatures rising and pests proliferating, Indian coffee growers are fighting challenges beyond their control.
Unpredictable rise in temperatures followed by an uncertain monsoon cycle has gradually started taking a toll on coffee yields. (Chevanon Photography, Pexels)
Coffee is the first thing I see, smell and taste in the day. But as caffeine-junkies like you or me ride the wave of premium specialty brews, we need to pay attention to growers across major regions in India, such as Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, who are battling a host of challenges due to a changing climate.
As spring transitions to summer, the pattern of unpredictable rise in temperatures followed by an uncertain monsoon cycle has gradually started taking a toll on yields and impacting the livelihood of coffee farmers.
Bengaluru based Tej Thammaiah, a co-founder of Maverick & Farmer Coffee Roasters and third-generation coffee farmer, says his team of growers on the 150-acre estate have meticulously documented the cultivation process to pinpoint the impact of increasing temperatures over the last decade. The mild, aromatic Arabica plant with its nuanced flavours, second only to Robusta in production volume in India, is highly susceptible to even the slightest change in climate. As temperatures increase, it hastens fruit ripening, leading to a loss in the overall quality of beans.
To fight this temperature change at estates such as Pollibetta in Coorg, his growers strive to find plots at higher, cooler elevations. But in this new environment, the finicky coffee fruit typically takes longer to mature. Moreover, changing plot locations is not a sustainable solution since coffee fruits in India are grown primarily in “shady” conditions, under a canopy of trees. And deforestation and logging is taking a toll everywhere.
It gets worse: When plants aren’t grown in ideal conditions, it leaves them more vulnerable to pests and diseases. Sunalini Menon, president of a coffee grading and training institute called Coffeelab in Bengaluru, mentions that a beetle known as white stem borer has been particularly harmful, spreading through India and Sri Lanka. It prefers plants exposed to sunlight and after burrowing in hard wood and roots as a larva, it hatches and feeds off the plant, destroying the woody tissue, leading to stems wilting and leaves yellowing. The beetle seems to have a particular liking for Arabica.
Not all hope is lost, though. Menon says India was one of the first countries to battle another infamous dweller, a fungus known as leaf rust, at the Mysore Coffee Experimental Station established by the British in 1925 at Chikmagalur, Karnataka. Known as the Central Coffee Research Institute, this research centre now run by the Coffee Board of India is researching and guiding growers on pest control, as well as initiatives such as diversifying shade patterns with local balsa and cedar trees and introducing new varietals of Arabica and Robust suited for tropical growth.
But she does believe it’s important to let go of the hesitancy to uproot plants. Farmers, perhaps for cultural reasons, have typically been hesitant to replant their land though research suggests that shorter plant life-cycles increase quantity, improve bean quality and even give growers some reprieve from emerging pests and diseases.
Ultimately, however, no practice can replace the tedious, time-consuming process of screening crops regularly. A task which falls squarely on growers.
Some shift to growing other crops. Those who stick it out, especially in smaller estates, need more support–in the form of agritourism, research on new techniques, investment in weather stations or, simply, from consumers.
If that doesn’t happen, we may in time find it increasingly difficult to get that morning fix.
For those new to coffee: Thammaiah suggests Selection 795 or Cauvery to taste domestic Arabicas (while we still can).
Nightcap is a column on beverages by Varud Gupta, author of Bhagwaan Ke Pakwaan and Chhotu. @varudgupta
source: http://www.lifestyle.livemint.com / Live Mint / Home> Mint Lounge> Food / by Varun Gupta / April 26th, 2021
Who on earth would like to miss a morning cup of hot steaming coffee?
Climate change could make about 50-88% of coffee-producing areas unsuitable and lead to an increase in pests and diseases, affecting its production and quality. There is an urgent need for research to save the bean from extinction.
Who on earth would like to miss a morning cup of hot steaming coffee? Coffee is becoming more popular, especially among the young around the world. Around 2.5 billion cups of coffee are consumed every day. The demand for coffee is projected to by 2050. But the question is: Can coffee supply be sustained?
Coffee is produced in around 70 countries but the dominant among them are Brazil, Vietnam, Columbia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Honduras and India. Coffee is also the second-most traded commodity after petroleum oil, employing over 125 million people around the world. Most of the coffee grown is made up of two types: Coffea arabica and Coffea robusta, with the former making up 70% of all coffee grown globally.
In India, robusta dominates in terms of production. Karnataka is the dominant state producing coffee in India, accounting for nearly 70% of the total production, followed by Kerala. Together, they account for about 90% of the production. In India, the area under coffee cultivation is 4,16,741 hectares (ha). There are 3,79,697 coffee holdings, out of which most are smallholdings of less than 10 ha in size.
Weather and long-term climate patterns are very critical for growing coffee. Temperature and rainfall conditions are the main drivers determining the yield, production and quality. Altitude is another key factor. Robusta is slightly hardier, as it evolved in lowland equatorial Africa, but grows well in areas with abundant rainfall, which should be well distributed. The optimum temperature range for robusta is 24 to 30°C, but it is less tolerant to very high or very low temperatures. Currently, the annual and seasonal temperature and rainfall variability lead to fluctuations in yield in almost all coffee-growing countries, affecting supply and price.
Climate change is projected to impact all crops, including plantation crops. Changing climate and associated pest and diseases could adversely impact coffee-growing areas. Higher temperatures will not only favour the proliferation of certain pests and diseases but also kill large swaths of insects that pollinate coffee plants. As temperature rises, coffee ripens more quickly, leading to a fall in quality. Rising temperature is expected to make some areas less suitable or completely unsuitable for coffee cultivation.
A recent review of studies in 2020 concluded that all studies based on modelling predict that areas suitable for coffee cultivation could decline by about 50% under moderate climate change projection scenarios by 2050 for both arabica and robusta. Another study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that the area unsuitable for coffee cultivation could be as high as 88% in Latin America, the dominant producer, by 2050. About half of the land around the world currently used to produce high-quality coffee could be unproductive by 2050, according to a recent study in the journal Climatic Change.
Thus, multiple studies show that climate change will have an extremely negative effect on future coffee production worldwide in terms of suitable cultivation areas, pest and diseases. Howard Schultz, who was the chairman of Starbucks — the largest global coffee chain — till 2017, is quoted to have said, “Climate change is going to play a bigger role in affecting the quality and integrity of the coffee.”
Coffee is a globally traded product and any impact on it in one part of the world will impact the rest, including India. International prices will determine the investment, income and survival of Indian coffee growers. If there is surplus production in Brazil and Columbia, prices in the international market will collapse. This will lead to a decline in market prices for Indian coffee, due to which farmers will experience heavy losses.
Research in India
There is limited research on the impact of climate change on coffee production in India. There are two ways the impact can be assessed: first, by long-term monitoring of changing climate and response of coffee production, which may take decades.
Modelling is another option to project the impact of climate change. There is limited modelling efforts globally and in India, in particular. With the current knowledge, one can conclude that climate change will have serious implications for coffee production and quality. We may have to brace for the disrupted supply of coffee and loss of aroma. According to climate change models, an increase of 20% to 25% in monsoon rainfall is projected for the Western Ghats districts of Karnataka and Kerala, along with the increased occurrence of high-intensity rainfall events. Further, increased warming of around 2 degrees Celsius is projected by the mid-2030s for these districts.
India has a Central Coffee Research Institute under the Coffee Board. Research on developing climate-resilient coffee varieties and cultivation practices would require several years or decades. Further, there is a need for extension service to train farmers in new practices, especially since a majority are smallholdings. In the meantime, coffee growers may need increased protection, price and insurance support from the Government of India and Karnataka.
In response to the risk of climate change on coffee, a global alliance of companies has been formed (‘Coffee and Climate’) with an objective to develop and implement coping strategies and to support smallholders to adapt to climate change, and ultimately to increase the resilience of entire coffee landscapes. Even Starbucks is conducting dedicated research and training of coffee growers in adaptation to climate change. Hope the Coffee Board also takes serious note of the threat of climate change and implement strategies to develop resilient varieties and practices, not only to help coffee growers sustain production, but also to ensure that hundreds of millions of coffee lovers continue to enjoy their morning cup.
(The writer is a retired professor, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru)
source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> Opinion> Perspective / by N H Ravindranath / April 22nd, 2021
The coffee species Coffea stenophylla, which bears black fruit rather than the red fruit typical of the two coffee species that are widely grown commercially, is seen in Ivory Coast in this undated photograph. | Photo Credit: REUTERS
Stenophylla was found to have a complex flavour profile, with natural sweetness, medium-high acidity, fruitiness and good “body” — the way it feels in the mouth
In dense tropical forests in Sierra Leone, scientists have rediscovered a coffee species not seen in the wild in decades — a plant they say may help secure the future of this valuable commodity that has been imperiled by climate change.
The researchers said on Monday that the species, called Coffea stenophylla, possesses greater tolerance for higher temperatures than the Arabica coffee that makes up 56% of global production and the robusta coffee that makes up 43%. The stenophylla coffee, they added, was demonstrated to have a superior flavour, similar to Arabica.
Botanist Aaron Davis, who led the study published in the journal Nature Plants, said stenophylla was farmed in parts of West Africa and exported to Europe until the early 20th century before being abandoned as a crop after robusta’s introduction.
Many farmers throughout the world’s coffee-growing belt already are experiencing climate change’s negative effects, an acute concern for the multibillion dollar industry.
This handout photograph released by Royal Botanical Gardens on April 19, 2021, shows the tasting of Coffea Stenophylla at Union Coffee in London on August 28, 2020. | Photo Credit: AFP
Arabica’s flavour is rated as superior and brings higher prices than robusta, which is mainly used for instant coffee and coffee blends. But Arabica has limited resilience to climate change and research has shown its global production could fall by at least 50% by mid-century.
Stenophylla grows at a mean annual temperature of 24.9℃ — 1.9℃ higher than robusta coffee and up to 6.8°C higher than Arabica coffee, the researchers said.
The stenophylla rediscovery, Davis said, may help in the “future-proofing” of a coffee industry that supports the economy of several tropical countries and provides livelihoods for more than 100 million farmers. While 124 coffee species are known, Arabica and robusta comprise 99% of consumption.
“The idea is that stenophylla could be used, with minimum domestication, as a high-value coffee for farmers in warmer climates,” said Davis, head of coffee research at Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
“For the longer term, stenophylla provides us with an important resource for breeding a new generation of climate-resilient coffee crop plants, given that it possesses a great flavour and heat tolerance. If the historic reports of resistance to coffee leaf rust and drought tolerance are found to be correct, this would represent further useful assets for coffee plant breeding,” Davis added.
Leaf rust is a fungal disease that has devastated coffee crops in Central and South America.
The study included flavour assessments involving 18 coffee-tasting experts. Stenophylla was found to have a complex flavour profile, with natural sweetness, medium-high acidity, fruitiness and good “body” — the way it feels in the mouth.
In December 2018, Davis and study co-authors Jeremy Haggar of the University of Greenwich and coffee development specialist Daniel Sarmu searched for stenophylla in the wild. They initially spotted a single plant in central Sierra Leone. About 140 km away in southeastern Sierra Leone, they found a healthy wild stenophylla population.
“Both locations were thick tropical forest, but stenophylla tends to occur on drier, more open areas: ridges, slopes and rocky areas,” Davis said.
Stenophylla had not been seen in the wild in Sierra Leone since 1954 and anywhere since the 1980s in Ivory Coast, Davis said. A few examples were held in coffee research collections.
Davis said stenophylla is threatened with extinction amid large-scale deforestation in the three countries where it has been known to grow in the wild: Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast.
Unlike the red and occasionally yellow fruit of Arabica and robusta plants, stenophylla’s fruit are intense black. The coffee beans are inside the fruit.
“I think we’re hugely optimistic for the future that stenophylla can bring,” said Jeremy Torz, co-founder of the specialty coffee business Union Hand-Roasted Coffee in East London where part of the taste-testing was held.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Sci-Tech> Science / by Reuters / April 20th, 2021
Emirati Coffee reported a 3,135 percent increase in online sales in 2020, fueled by strong market demand for its specialty coffee produce
Jeddah :
Emirati Coffee, the UAE’s first specialty coffee roastery, is expanding into the Kingdom with the opening of its first Saudi branch in July 2021. The chain, which currently has 160 locations worldwide, will open in Alkhobar under the brand name Knowhere.
The company is preparing to open an outlet in Riyadh in 2022.
Mohamed Ali Al-Madfai, CEO of Emirati Coffee
Mohamed Ali Al-Madfai, CEO of Emirati Coffee, told Arab News that the Riyadh outlet would be called the Emirati Coffee Roastery.
Al-Madfai said he believed there was great potential for growth in the Saudi market and that he is aiming to capitalize on the brand’s popularity among Saudi travelers, “especially those that came to love that brand when visiting Dubai pre-pandemic,” he said. Emirati Coffee reported a 3,135 percent increase in online sales in 2020, fueled by strong market demand for its specialty coffee produce.
The busiest period was during the first two months of the pandemic, when the UAE launched a national sterilization campaign to contain the virus. “Coffee was already the number one e-commerce grocery product before 2020, but the pandemic boosted the growth due to greater consumption at home.
Coffee buyers cut back on trips to the supermarket and coffee drinkers can’t go to the cafés,” Al-Madfai said.
He added: “Consumers resorted to online purchases and with the availability of our own delivery fleet, they were able to get their hands on their cup of coffee.”
source: http://www.arabnews.com / Arab News / Home> Business> Latest New / by Deema Al-Khudair / April 13th, 2021
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