Besides coffea arabica and coffea robusta (canefora),
there are no other coffee cultivars that are currently in commercial production.
All of the varietals we discuss (Typica, Bourbon, Mundo Novo, Maragogype, Catimor,
Catuai, Caturra, Variedad Colombia, Pacas, SL-9, Costa Rica 95, Kents, etc.
etc. etc.) are all arabica. In botanical terms these would be written as such:
coffea arabica var. typica. The one species with the lost potential is
perhaps coffea liberica ... and I will be somebody is growing it somewhere,
but I have never seen a sample.
There are many other plants in the coffea family: it is a HUGE
family. There are many wild types found in Africa, but they are not commercially
viable nor do many actually produce a seed as such. But there have been experiments
in working with alternative cultivars or cross-breeding wild cultivars with
commercial types.
And thusly ... here are a couple photos a friend of a friend
brought back from a coffee trip to India:
The Central Coffee Research Institute, established during 1925, is located
in the heartland of coffee tracts, near Balehonnnur in Chikmagalur district
of Karnataka. This place is coffee geek heavan!!! Around 60 scientific
and technical personnel are involved in carrying out research in various
disciplines. which ffeatures the research farm pictured here, about 80
hectares are cultivated with coffee The institute also has a well-equipped
laboratory facility for research and a central library with a vast collection
of books and periodicals on coffee.
One of the most interesting is the purple coffee (!),
coffea stenophyla! The long narrow leaf is also very unusual compared
to c. arabica and c. robusta cultivars.
This is a picture of Liberica from Zanzibar that I took, pointy, evil-looking
coffee eh? This is the character of the Liberica cherry and seed, but admittedly
I slected some "extra-pointy" ones for this photo. Below is an image of
the Liberica leaf (HUGE!) from an unrelated trip I took. This one was in
an experimental coffee garden, so there was only 3 trees there.
I have a bazillion coffee varietal and species photos tucked away in
my travelogs, and I hope to complile the images with comments here, or
on another page that discusses species, mutations, hybrids and such.
