Bad news– the world is ending. Good news– science is trying to make sure we have nice coffee to drink until the bitter end. It’ll be nice to know that as Amsterdam hits 70°c in mid-May and we plummet into a totally preventable climate fueled global disaster, at least we put the effort into making sure we didn’t have to drink robusta as we careen toward the collecting Jonestowning of the human race.
Okay, admittedly that’s a bit heavy handed, but the reality here is that even in the Netherlands we are already seeing a clearly altered climate. We have once again set the new record for the hottest summer on record, this time shattering the previous by nearly half a degree. Sure, this was expected to be an unseasonably warm summer, but this is projected to be the new normal by 2050. Things are changing quickly, and our path forward has to include both fighting to preserve our planet against this preventable and irreversible crisis, and addressing the new realities that we must adjust to going forward.
At origin, these new realities can often mean that varieties that have long thrived in certain environments are no longer viable in their changing climates. It also means that the land expected to be suitable to grow arabica will continue to shrink. Fortunately, humanity has long thrived in adapting crops to be more economical to environments and outcomes, and this has already been the focus of some brilliant folks around the world. For over a decade World Coffee Research has been trailblazing hybrid varieties aimed at addressing exactly this issue. These are bred to be more temperature resilient as the climate changes, more pest resistant as surrounding landscapes shift, and typically either with higher yields or capable of being more densely populated as the amount of land capable of growing high quality coffee diminishes. These hybrids are broadly classified as F1 [filial 1] varieties.
(An important note here is that many different F1 hybrids exist for many different reasons. The focus of this blog is the F1 varieties developed as a means of navigating the climate crisis.)
The distinction of F1 is exclusively for the first generation of a hybrid- seeds taken from an F1 tree and planted would yield an F2 tree, or second generation. This is important because a second generation would likely not retain the same characteristics of the F1 hybrid. This is because all of the possible traits genetically available from the parent trees of the F1 would be in the mix, meaning the new generation could go in any number of unpredictable directions. So while F1 is a known quantity that answers a specific need, the F2 is a wildcard and a risk too great for most producers to take, especially because it will take years to know the outcome.
Did you ever do punnet squares in school to learn about inheriting traits from parents? How you carry all of these traits that don’t end up manifesting in you, but you can still pass them on to your children? It’s exactly like that– recessive traits can give red hair and green eyes to children of parents with blond hair and blue eyes. Teachers are apparently a lot less gung-ho about pushing this fun exercise on kids as it has a knack for revealing family secrets like infidelity, and parents are less than thrilled about kids coming home from school with hard to answer questions. Anyways, let’s get back on track here.
Right. So scientists work hard to craft a very specific set of traits for a new variety, then find that this tree is exactly what they’re looking for. Great! The logistical issue here is that the “hybrid vigor” that exists in this first generation not only won’t likely pass on to the next generation, but that to settle into the genetic stability necessary to reliably plant seeds taken from the tree and produce the same set of characteristics takes eight generations. So if a typical generation takes four years to produce, eight generations would take thirty two years to achieve stability. This doesn’t mean the creation of this variety is not useful, it just means that these coffees cannot be reliably planted from seeds taken from the F1 tree and expect it to be similar. So all of these F1 trees must be planted from seeds made by clone propagation from a reliable source– or at least they have up until now...
