About Us
Our Members
WCR member companies
Countries represented
Our Mission
Grow, protect and enhance supplies of quality coffee while improving the livelihoods of the families who produce it.
Our Role
We identify priorities shared by farmers, countries, and roasters to generate transformative impact on coffee production.
Farmers and National Programs
We support countries to modernize their variety improvement systems, align their research with market demand, and bring proven approaches from other crops to accelerate progress in coffee.
Roasters and Industry
We elevate the coffee industry’s shared priorities for agricultural innovation, driving value for everyone from farmers to consumers.
Our Values
Contribute in the most impactful way you can. Be inclusive in how you work. Always acknowledge the contributions of others. Listen, and try to understand the needs and interests of our stakeholders and look for common ground and shared value. Support and encourage your colleagues.
Look for creative solutions to difficult problems. Recognize that the best solutions come from the open exchange of ideas. Actively pursue diverse perspectives—whether across scientific disciplines, market segments, or geographies. Ask questions.
Prioritize the problems that drive our mission forward and deliver value for our members and partners. Make sure you understand the problem and that you can express it to others. Seek support to prioritize. Ensure we have the ability to implement solutions and bring them across the finish line.
Look for ways to continuously improve, from start to finish. When a problem arises, work to correct the problem and understand and address its root cause. Record what works and what doesn’t so others can learn from your experience.
Uphold commitments to one another and to members and partners. Own the outcomes of our work. Communicate clearly. Prioritize compliance. Admit mistakes when they happen. Act with integrity.
Our Board
Our board members are some of the most important leaders and thinkers from coffee companies around the world. They work hard behind the scenes to guide our programs.
Our Team
Our leadership team develops our strategy and executes our ambitious agenda to modernize variety innovation systems.
Our global team is responsible for executing our core projects and programs to increase supplies of quality coffee and improve farmer livelihoods.
FAQ
World Coffee Research (WCR) is a 501 (c)(5) non-profit, collaborative research organization founded by the global coffee industry to grow, protect, and enhance supplies of quality coffee while improving the livelihood of the families who produce it.
Demand for coffee keeps rising while climate change threatens yields, quality, and the farmers who grow it. Better varieties are the most efficient way to meet that challenge at scale: productive, disease-resistant, climate-resilient trees help farmers produce more with less, reduce agrochemical use and emissions, ease pressure on forests, and secure diverse supplies of quality coffee from many origins.
WCR uses advanced quantitative and molecular breeding methods and global collaboration to deliver better trees, faster. Through the Innovea Global Coffee Breeding Network, we work with 11 countries that together produce more than 40% of the world's coffee, and we strengthen seed systems so better plants reach farmers now.
The varieties we develop today will determine what coffee we drink in the future and how sustainably it can be grown. Funding agricultural innovation means lower business risk and a flourishing future for farmers, consumers, and businesses for decades to come.
Coffee industry—roasters, green coffee suppliers, and equipment manufacturers large and small—invest collaboratively in WCR's research and steward the portfolio. Coffee industry leaders serve on the WCR Board of Directors and guide our research agenda in consultation with stakeholders along the supply chain. Our member companies drive our strategic agenda, provide input into the quality of new varieties, and receive member benefits in support of their engagement.
WCR is funded through direct contributions from coffee industry stakeholders through a structured fee model adopted by the WCR Board in 2021. Where priority precompetitive research is defined between WCR and partners, primarily national coffee institutes, we mobilize public investment to advance these activities. Coffee companies can support our work through a fixed annual contribution or our Checkoff Program with cents per pound/kilogram. See our Become a Member page for more information.
