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The re-emergence of Liberica coffee as a major crop plant

Nature Plants volume 8, pages 1322–1328 (2022)Cite this article

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The failure of Liberica coffee as a global crop plant by the turn of the twentieth century was due to a number of factors, including the inappropriate selection of material for global dissemination. Renewed interest in this species, particularly in the excelsa variant, is evident across the coffee supply chain. In a warming world, and in an era beset with supply chain disruption, Liberica coffee could re-emerge as a major crop plant.

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Fig. 1: Liberica coffee and plant.
Fig. 2: Seed length versus width for Liberica, Arabica and excelsa coffee samples.
Fig. 3: Seed length (left) and width (right) for C. liberica var. liberica (Liberica), C. arabica (Arabica) and C. liberica var. dewevrei (excelsa) from unroasted (green coffee beans), unscreened (i.e. not size sorted by the producer) commercial samples.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the National Forest Authority (NFA) and the Ugandan Wildlife Authority (UWA) for granting permission to study wild populations of Coffea in Uganda. At Kyagalanyi Coffee Ltd (ED&F Man/Volcafe), Uganda, we thank Geert Jan Heusinkveld, Ted Maberly, David Tusasiibwe and Anneke Fermont for project and logistic support; and Andrew Tucker at ED&F Man/Volcafe, UK, for supply chain support and guidance. At Clifton Coffee Roasters, UK, we thank Josh Clark for fieldwork support and sensory analysis, Paul Griffiths for coffee development and Tim Nurse for work on quality control and roasting profiles. We thank Ed Stiles, Ian Paterson and Alexander Puxley at Equatoria Teak Company, Kenya and South Sudan, for samples of excelsa coffee and information on excelsa production in South Sudan; Esham Selam at House of Kendal, Malaysia for samples of Liberica coffee and accompanying information. We thank the herbarium curators at the herbaria listed herein, and Cecily Nowell-Smith and Erin Messenger at Kew’s Library Art and Archives and Economic Botany Collection, respectively. Funding was provided by the Darwin Initiative, UK (Project 27-014), the Amar-Franses Foster-Jenkins Trust and the Bentham-Moxon Trust.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, UK

    Aaron P. Davis

  2. National Agricultural Research Organization, Entebbe, Uganda

    Catherine Kiwuka

  3. Millennium Seed Bank (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), Wakehurst, UK

    Aisyah Faruk

  4. Kyagalanyi Coffee Ltd. (ED&F Man/Volcafe), Kampala, Uganda

    Mweru J. Walubiri

  5. Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

    James Kalema

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  1. Aaron P. Davis
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Correspondence to Aaron P. Davis.

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Davis, A.P., Kiwuka, C., Faruk, A. et al. The re-emergence of Liberica coffee as a major crop plant. Nat. Plants 8, 1322–1328 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01309-5

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