Coffee
More Coffee Trivia by SmartHerbals:
Coffee (the beverage) is made from two species of coffee, namely Coffea arabica and C. canephora var. robusta (Commonly called Arabica and Robusta). Arabica plants are harder to grow, but produce better-quality beans.
Robusta and Arabica make more caffeine in their leaves than in the beans, and Robusta has more bean-caffeine than Arabica.
Cultivated Arabica comes in two main genetic lines, called Typica (from Amsterdam via Indonesia) and Bourbon (from Réunion). Both were distributed from Yemen, but originated in Ethiopia. Only a few plants survived their travels, making most cultivated Ariabica very, very closely related.
A Mr John Crawford, in 1852, was so convinced that coffee (along with tea and tobacco) would promote a more sober and moral society that he requested the government to be careful not to tax it excessively (as, according to him, tea and tobacco were)!
To make coffee-gorwing a more commercially viable proposition, efforts are currently underway to use the cherry pulp to make a coffee cherry spirit. Tasting notes of vegetative-earthy, green notes, sweet, and fruity. No coffee aroma though.
Coffee sales are recording in "60 kg bags" - in 2022 81 million bags of Arabica and 48 million bags of Robusta were recorded.
Sources:
Crawford, J., 1852. History of coffee. Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 15(1), pp.50-58.
Perrois, C., et al., 2015. Differential regulation of caffeine metabolism in Coffea arabica (Arabica) and Coffea canephora (Robusta). Planta, 241, pp.179-191.
Anthony, F., et al., 2002. The origin of cultivated Coffea arabica L. varieties revealed by AFLP and SSR markers. Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 104, pp.894-900.
Blumenthal, P., et al., 2022. Production of coffee cherry spirits from coffea arabica varieties. Foods, 11(12), p.1672.
International Coffee Organization Trade Statistics - November 2022
Image: Depositphotos - aln2311
