News

The board of directors of World Coffee Research has launched an executive search for a new chief executive officer. Dr. Tim Schilling, the founder and outgoing chief executive officer will remain as director of the organization.

Dr. Robert Weingart Barreto is no stranger to Africa’s wild coffee forests. A professor at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV) in Brazil, he is the lead researcher of a World Coffee Research project that seeks to use biological control (also known as biocontrol) to combat coffee leaf rust, the worst disease in coffee farms around the world.

When World Coffee Research (WCR) formed in 2012, one of the first initiatives the organization launched was the International Multilocation Variety Trial (IMLVT). Each of 24 participating country planted the same 31 varieties. Most of the trial sites were established in 2016, and earlier this month, the first coffee cherries began to arrive. Here, photos of the first harvest at one IMLVT site in Guatemala.

As someone who grew up on a vineyard, working in agriculture always felt inevitable for Solene Pruvot-Woehl. After completing formal training in agronomy and getting her masters at ISARA-LYON, Pruvot-Woehl worked as an agricultural advisor in Columbia, and then started working with RD2Vision. Now she’s the project leader of the International Multilocation Variety Program, one of WCR’s core projects. The key aim of the project is to facilitate the global exchange of the world’s best coffee varieties.