Video: Coffee’s status as world’s favorite drink threatened by climate change, shallow gene pool

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Climate change could spell disaster for coffee, a crop that requires specific temperatures to flourish and that is highly sensitive to a range of pests. So scientists are racing to develop more tenacious strains of one of the world’s most beloved beverages.

[Eight] new hybrid varieties are gradually trickling onto the market. And this summer, World Coffee Research ­— an industry-funded nonprofit group — kicked off field tests of 46 new varieties that it says will change coffee-growing as the world knows it.

[C]offee is particularly vulnerable, scientists say, because it has an unusually shallow gene pool. Only two species of coffee, arabica and robusta, are currently grown for human consumption. And farmers traditionally haven’t selected for diversity when breeding either plant — instead, essentially, they’ve been marrying generations of coffee with its close cousins.

As a result, there are precious few varieties of arabica that can grow in warmer or wetter conditions. In addition, diseases and pests that might be exacerbated under climate change could knock out entire fields of plants.

[iframe src=”https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/7f8d1bc0-af79-11e7-9b93-b97043e57a22″]

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: The race to save coffee

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