Coffea arabica (/əˈræbɪkə/), also known as the Arabica coffee, is a species of flowering plant in the coffee and madder family Rubiaceae. It is believed to be the first species of coffee to have been cultivated and is the dominant cultivar, representing about 60% of global production.[2]Coffee produced from the less acidic, more bitter, and more highly caffeinated robusta bean (C. canephora) makes up most of the remaining coffee production. The natural populations of Coffea arabica are restricted to the forests of South Ethiopia and Yemen.[3][4]
allotetraploid, with two copies of two different genomes. This hybridization event at the origin of Coffea arabica is estimated between 1.08 million and 543,000 years ago and is linked to changing environmental conditions in East Africa.[7][8]
Description
Wild plants grow between 9 and 12 m (30 and 39 ft) tall, and have an open branching system; the leaves are opposite, simple elliptic-ovate to oblong, 6–12 cm (2.5–4.5 in) long and 4–8 cm (1.5–3 in) broad, glossy dark green. The flowers are white, 10–15 mm in diameter, and grow in axillary clusters. The seeds are contained in a drupe (commonly called a "cherry") 10–15 mm in diameter, maturing bright red to purple and typically containing two seeds, often called coffee beans.
Udawattakele and Gannoruwa Forest Reserves near Kandy, Sri Lanka, coffee shrubs are also a problematic invasive species.[16]
Coffee has been produced in Queensland and New South Wales of Australia, starting in the 1980s and 90s.[17] The Wet Tropics Management Authority has classified Coffea arabica as an environmental weed for southeast Queensland due to its invasiveness in non-agricultural areas.[18][19]
Arabica coffee production in Indonesia began in 1699 through the spread of Yemen's trade. Indonesian coffees, such as Sumatran and Java, are known for their heavy body and low acidity. This makes them ideal for blending with the higher acidity coffees from Central America and East Africa.[9]
Cultivation and use
Coffea arabica accounts for 60% of the world's coffee production.[2][21]
C. arabica takes approximately seven years to mature fully, and it does best with 1.0–1.5 metres (39–59 in) of rain, evenly distributed throughout the year.[citation needed] It is usually cultivated at an altitude between 1,300 and 1,500 m (4,300 and 4,900 ft),[citation needed] but there are plantations that grow it as low as sea level and as high as 2,800 m (9,200 ft).[22]
The plant can tolerate low temperatures, but not frost, and it does best with an average temperature between 15 and 24 °C (59 and 75 °F).[23] Commercial cultivars mostly only grow to about 5 m, and are frequently trimmed as low as 2 m to facilitate harvesting. Unlike Coffea canephora,C. arabica prefers to be grown in light shade.[24]
Two to four years after planting, C. arabica produces small, white, highly fragrant flowers. The sweet fragrance resembles the sweet smell of jasmine flowers. Flowers opening on sunny days result in the greatest number of berries. This can be problematic and deleterious, however, as coffee plants tend to produce too many berries; this can lead to an inferior harvest and even damage yield in the following years, as the plant will favor the ripening of berries to the detriment of its own health.
On well-kept plantations, overflowering is prevented by pruning the tree. The flowers only last a few days, leaving behind only the thick, dark-green leaves. The berries then begin to appear. These are as dark green as the foliage until they begin to ripen, at first to yellow and then light red and finally darkening to a glossy, deep red. At this point, they are called "cherries", which fruit they then resemble, and are ready for picking.
The berries are oblong and about 1 cm long. Inferior coffee results from picking them too early or too late, so many are picked by hand to be able to better select them, as they do not all ripen at the same time. They are sometimes shaken off the tree onto mats, which means ripe and unripe berries are collected together.
The trees are difficult to cultivate and each tree can produce from 0.5 to 5.0 kilograms (1.1 to 11.0 lb) of dried beans, depending on the tree's individual character and the climate that season. The most valuable part of this cash crop is the beans inside. Each berry holds two locules containing the beans. The coffee beans are actually two seeds within the fruit; sometimes, a third seed or one seed, a peaberry, grows in the fruit at the tips of the branches. These seeds are covered in two membranes; the outer one is called the "parchment coat" and the inner one is called the "silver skin".
On
Java, trees are planted at all times of the year and are harvested year-round. In parts of Brazil, however, the trees have a season and are harvested only in winter. The plants are vulnerable to damage in such poor growing conditions as cold or low pH soil, and they are also more vulnerable to pests than the C. robusta plant.[25]
It is expected that a medium-term depletion of indigenous populations of C. arabica may occur, due to projected
global warming, based on IPCC modelling.[26] Climate change—rising temperatures, longer droughts, and excessive rainfall—appears to threaten the sustainability of arabica coffee production, leading to attempts to breed new cultivars for the changing conditions.[27]
Gourmet coffees are almost exclusively high-quality mild varieties of arabica coffee, and among the best known arabica coffee beans in the world are those from
Blends consisting only of Arabica are often labelled "100% Arabica" as a sign of quality. In 2023, several large coffee roasters dropped the "100% Arabica" declaration previously residing on some of their packages and started to blend less expensive
Robusta coffee into the mix. To avoid making larger changes to the visual design of the package the Arabica label was replaced by other labeling, keeping the previous ornamental design, thereby presenting a case of shrinkflation
. In some case, the coffee is still advertised as "100% Arabica" in flyers in 2024, but is no longer declared so on the actual package.
A Coffea arabica plantation in São João do Manhuaçu, Minas Gerais, Brazil