Coffea Eugenioides plant, the genetic parent to Coffea Arabica, was almost extinct until recently. Arabica is the earthy, full-bodied, chocolatey coffee that most of the world finds delectable. Eugenioides is a bit different—still strong, but with hints of citrus fruit and marshmallow. The kicker: Eugenioides has half the caffeine.
Now, Eugenioides is giving scientists clues about how to make a more metabolically friendly Arabica, to tweak the way it makes caffeine, and create a half-caff or decaf plant in the laboratory with the same full flavor of the ones found in nature.
At Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands, Jan Schaart and his collaborators are breeding the next generation of wheat and potato plants. With new tools of genome editing, they probe the plants’ metabolic pathways and look for ways to make them healthier and more productive. It’s a task that many food and beverage companies are carrying out in parallel.
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CRISPR machinery along with a wealth of public knowledge about the coffee genome may allow them to do it, or at least come up with a plan.
