Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 4 • Number 16 • 10th September 2004

Brazil Maps Coffee Genome, Hopes to Cut Costs and Improve Quality

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After two years of research, Brazil — the world’s largest coffee producer — has cracked the code and created the first DNA map of the coffee plant. The success of the Coffee Genome Project is expected to help reduce production costs and create bigger beans with a richer flavour. Experts say that genetically engineered plants could double coffee production per hectare, enabling Brazil to reduce production costs by 20 percent. The DNA map contains information on the 200,000 DNA sequences and 35,000 genes that create different aromas and caffeine levels in coffee beans. Armed with such information, Brazil intends to increase production of gourmet, organic and new caffeine-free beans within two years. Initially only six Brazilian public institutions will have access to the genome database. After five or six years, the private sector and possibly foreign companies will be able to access the database.

Lowering the production costs through DNA mapping may also help coffee producing countries such as Brazil to better confront the current coffee crisis. While the coffee industry in developed countries has prospered in recent years, today’s rock bottom prices are causing hardship in countries where coffee is a key economic activity. While the value of retail sales of coffee, largely in industrialised countries, has increased from US$ 30 billion to 70 billion over the last decade, earnings by coffee producing countries fell from US$ 10-12 billion to 5.5 billion. Prices on world markets, which averaged around 120 US cents/lb in the 1980s, are now around 50 cents, the lowest in real terms for 100 years.

“Brazil Maps Coffee Genome to Create ‘Super Beans’,” REUTERS, 12 August 2004; “Brewing Better Coffee with DNA,” AP, 11 August 2004; “Coffee Crisis,” ICO, September 2004.