News and knowledge

In 2016, WCR and the Global Crop Diversity Trust spearheaded the development of the Global Conservation Strategy for Coffee Genetic Resources, providing a roadmap for the secure preservation of wild coffee species and varieties. Ensuring that these plants are conserved is essential to the sustainability of coffee and the livelihoods of farmers who depend on it. The Global Crop Diversity Trust (Crop Trust) is an international organization working to safeguard crop diversity across the globe.

One prominent academic figure helping the fight against coffee leaf rust is Dr. Cathie Aime, a mycologist at Purdue University, who broadly studies the systematics of rust fungi. She is one of the few scientists in the world—and the only one in the United States—who focuses on this area of research.

In her second feature-length article for Standart Magazine, World Coffee Research's Hanna Neuschwander reflects on how new varieties—better coffee trees with higher yield and better cup quality—could become the future of coffee ... if the bet on F1 hybrid pays off.

Coffee has always been a passion for Sara Bogantes. Coming from a coffee-producing family in Costa Rica’s Central Valley, she has been connected to coffee for as long as she can remember. Trained in agronomy, phytopathology, and agroecology, Sara has worked in germplasm banks and studied the genetics of coffee. Now she leads the Global Coffee Monitoring Program, a network of small, on-farm demonstration trials that show farmers the benefits of genetically improved coffee varieties. We talked to Sara to learn more about her background, the program, and why she finds helping farmers gratifying.

Sydney roaster Single O is spearheading the call to the local coffee industry in Sydney, and Australia in general, to keep coffee farmers – and, by extension, themselves – in business.