11 September 2014: The complete sequence of the coffee genome has been released into the public domain in an attempt to accelerate plant variety selection in the face of climate change and to meet growers’ specific needs. The genetic information of the Coffea arabica and Coffea eugenioides species, containing the location and characterization of more than 30,000 genes, was presented during the Conference of the Association for Science and Information on Coffee (ASIC), held 8-13 September in Armenia, Colombia.

Seeking solutions, Colombia’s National Coffee Research Center (Cenicafé), in cooperation with the United States’ University of Maryland and Cornell University, are studying the genome of coffee plants to enable climate mitigation and adaptation and to support future production. The ongoing study, which is being conducted in Colombia and is based on natural cross breeding, is supported by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Regional Fund for Agricultural Technology (FONTAGRO). The announcement, made on 11 September, followed a separate announcement by an international team of scientists, on 5 September, of the sequencing of the Coffea canephora species.

A video produced by the IDB’s ‘BIDtv’ explains how more than 280,000 families in the world’s coffee belt depend economically on coffee cultivation, which has been threatened in recent years by longer winters and summers, excessive rain, and plagues and fungus, such as coffee rust. The IDB says that increased understanding of the coffee genome will enable the development of more climate-resilient and disease-resistant varieties. [IDB Press Release] [Bioversity Press Release] [IDB Project Webpage] [Video on ‘A New Coffee Breed for Colombia’] [ASIC Conference Website] [Coffea Canephora Genome Article]