"This should be a step forward in terms of
getting high quality decaffeinated coffee, not least because extraction of
caffeine with solvents would no longer be necessary. There's always a risk of
losing flavour compounds, although there are examples of very good flavour in
today's decaffeinated products."
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Naturally decaffeinated coffee plant discovered
By Andy Coghlan
June 23, 2004
A naturally
decaffeinated coffee plant has been discovered. Coffee from the new strain
could be tastier than existing decaf brews, which can lose flavour compounds
when caffeine is extracted with solvents.
Other caffeine-free
plants have been reported, but the latest comes from the same genetic stock as
today's elite commercial strains. This means the decaffeinated trait should be
relatively easy to breed into popular types of coffee.
"This is the first
report of a decaffeinated variety of Coffea arabica,"
says Paulo Mazzafera, head of the team at the University of Campinas, Brazil,
which isolated the strains. "This species is the most cultivated species
in the world, responsible for more than 75 per cent of traded coffee," he
says.
The discovery is welcome
news for an industry which has struggled to cross elite varieties with more
distantly related decaffeinated species.
"So far,
caffeine-free natural coffees have been Madagascan species which are outside
the mainstream, and not easy to breed from," says Pablo Dubois, head of
operations at the International Coffee Organization, in London, UK.
"This should be a
step forward in terms of getting high quality decaffeinated coffee," says
Dubois, not least because extraction of caffeine with solvents would no longer
be necessary. "There's always a risk of losing flavour compounds, although
there are examples of very good flavour in today's decaffeinated
products."
Tree screening
Mazzafera and his
colleagues discovered three naturally decaffeinated varieties after screening
3000 Ethiopian coffee trees, representing 300 strains. Experiments on the
plants demonstrated that they lacked caffeine synthase, the enzyme in leaves
that converts a compound called theobromine into caffeine.
As well as eliminating
the need for solvent extraction, the discovery could also be an alternative to
decaffeinated plants created by knocking out the gene for the same enzyme via
genetic engineering (New Scientist, 18 June 2003). Some consumers
are unlikely to accept these.
Mazzafera says that it
might be possible to produce commercial decaffeinated coffee directly from the
newly discovered strains within five years.
"I haven't tasted them yet, but
in general, C. arabica tastes OK," he
says. Programmes to breed the trait into existing elite strains could take
longer, perhaps 15 years, he says.
"It would also provide a way
for developing countries to compete with big companies which produce
industrially decaffeinated coffee," says Mazzafera.
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Journal reference: Nature (vol 429, p826)
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Ed's Note: Coffee in Retrospect is a reprint column prepared by Coffee Monitor and Poor Farmer blog to provide context for the current global coffee trade by republishing news articles from the past. In this column, we intend to reprint archived prints by converting images into electronic file formats with careful conformity to originals and, whenever applicable and possible, we provide links to the sources of the information. Meanwhile, responsibility for the contents lies solely with the authors and the views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect our opinions.
Ed's Note: Coffee in Retrospect is a reprint column prepared by Coffee Monitor and Poor Farmer blog to provide context for the current global coffee trade by republishing news articles from the past. In this column, we intend to reprint archived prints by converting images into electronic file formats with careful conformity to originals and, whenever applicable and possible, we provide links to the sources of the information. Meanwhile, responsibility for the contents lies solely with the authors and the views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect our opinions.
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