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Arabica-like flavour in a heat-tolerant wild coffee species

Nature Plants volume 7, pages 413–418 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

There are numerous factors to consider when developing climate-resilient coffee crops, including the ability to tolerate altered climatic conditions, meet agronomic and value chain criteria, and satisfy consumer preferences for flavour (aroma and taste). We evaluated the sensory characteristics and key environmental requirements for the enigmatic narrow-leaved coffee (Coffea stenophylla), a wild species from Upper West Africa1. We confirm historical reports of a superior flavour1,2,3 and uniquely, and remarkably, reveal a sensory profile analogous to high-quality Arabica coffee. We demonstrate that this species grows and crops under the same range of key climatic conditions as (sensorially inferior) robusta and Liberica coffee4,5,6,7,8,9 and at a mean annual temperature 6.2–6.8 °C higher than Arabica coffee, even under equivalent rainfall conditions. This species substantially broadens the climate envelope for high-quality coffee and could provide an important resource for the development of climate-resilient coffee crop plants.

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Fig. 1: Distribution map of wild locations for Arabica (C. arabica), robusta (C. canephora), Liberica (C. liberica) and stenophylla (C. stenophylla) coffee.
Fig. 2: Scatter and density plots of modelled annual mean temperature versus total mean annual precipitation.
Fig. 3: Radar graph for sensory (flavour) profile using a light roast, for stenophylla, Arabica and robusta coffee.
Fig. 4: Yes/no responses to four questions asked, in addition to the CIRAD sensory protocol.

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Data availability

All data are available in the manuscript, in the Supplementary Information or from published sources.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Department for Forestry, Ministry of Agriculture and the Sierra Leone Agricultural Research Institute in Sierra Leone and Welthungerhilfe staff at their offices in Freetown and Kenema; in particular, F. Moestl, M. Bischofberger and D. Wambulwa Makokha. We thank the BRC Coffea collection, maintained by the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and CIRAD in Reunion Island, for providing plant material of stenophylla. We thank the Sensory Analysis Laboratory UMR, Qualisud, CIRAD, Montpellier, France for providing access to the laboratory and protocols. We thank the sensory panel judges from the following companies/organizations: L’Arbre à Café, AST Sensory Skills, Belco, CIRAD, La Claque Café (France), Nespresso (Switzerland), Supremo (Belgium) and Union Hand-Roasted Coffee (United Kingdom). Sensory panel members are given in Supplementary Table 5. Funding for the Sierra Leone and United Kingdom part of this research was through a Darwin Initiative Scoping Project DARSC196.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, UK

    Aaron P. Davis & Justin Moat

  2. CIRAD, UMR DIADE, Montpellier, France

    Delphine Mieulet

  3. DIADE, Univ. Montpellier, IRD, Montpellier, France

    Delphine Mieulet

  4. Welthungerhilfe, Freetown, Sierra Leone

    Daniel Sarmu

  5. Department of Agriculture, Health and Environment, Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, Medway, UK

    Jeremy Haggar

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Contributions

A.P.D., D.M., J.M., J.H. and D.S. designed the experiments. A.P.D., D.M., J.M. and D.S. provided the data. A.P.D., D.M. and J.M. analysed the data. A.P.D., J.H. and J.M. wrote the first draft and D.M. and D.S. provided additional text and editing.

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Correspondence to Aaron P. Davis.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Plants thanks Benoit Bertrand, Jean-Xavier Guinard and Jarod Kath for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary methods, results and Figs. 1 and 2.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Tables 1–6

Six tables in a single Excel file, with each table in a separate worksheet.

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Davis, A.P., Mieulet, D., Moat, J. et al. Arabica-like flavour in a heat-tolerant wild coffee species. Nat. Plants 7, 413–418 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-00891-4

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