You may have heard that climate change will affect almost all aspects of our daily lives. From the food you buy to the clothes you wear, the climate affects all the raw materials needed to produce tangible goods. Coffee may be able to resist the changes more than most, however, with the study of the Robusta bean in the coffee farms of Vietnam.
A quick lesson on coffee: most coffee shops prefer to get the arabica bean to produce their products. It has a rich flavor profile and lends itself to a smooth cup of joe. However, the arabica bean is very sensitive to changes in the climate, droughts, fungi, and other diseases. In the past, dry summers or hurricanes have caused shortages of this bean for the growing markets.
Enter the robusta bean. This bean was long disregarded as too rubbery tasting and not viable for large-scale cultivation. This bean is not as susceptible to changes in climate and has more resistance to fungi and pests. Taking this a step further, a farmer in Vietnam has hybridized this plant to make it even more robust and better tasting. This “green dwarf” variant is shorter than other robusta plants and much heartier. During one of the bad seasons for the arabica bean, Vietnam sold more than 30% more coffee bean crop than ever reported in the nation’s history. This got people taking notice of this unique breed of coffee plant coming out of Vietnam.
Researchers are studying the factors that make this new green dwarf robusta coffee plant more resilient while not sacrificing flavor. They have also tried to graft robusta plants onto other varieties of coffee to further drought-proof this remarkable hybrid. This could bode well for the coffee drinkers in the future. Farms in Central America have also started to experiment with robusta beans to try and cultivate them as well as to try and stop the loss climate change has on their crops. So just remember the robusta bean when the world is burning down around you, and you can still enjoy a nice cup of java.