News and knowledge

Join us for our annual gathering and report-out to the coffee community about WCR's progress over the prior year and a preview of what's ahead. Highlights will include a virtual tour of the harvest of experimental F1 hybrids in El Salvador, the results of a recent global consultation about coffee R&D priorities, and an update on our 2020-2025 strategy. This year, we are joined by WCR's founder, Tim Schilling; our new CEO, Vern Long, our new scientific director, George Kotch; and communications director Hanna Neuschwander; with special guest Doug Welsh, VP of Peet's Coffee & Tea.

Between 2012 and 2019, World Coffee Research (WCR) built the foundation to execute, for the first time, a shared global R&D agenda for coffee agricultural research. That foundation includes an unprecedented global network of trials beginning to produce meaningful harvests, as well as collaborative engagement with stakeholders across the industry and the world. Our 2019 Annual Report provides the latest look at what we have produced through this approach, in collaboration with our global network of partners.

At the start of 2020, World Coffee Research began preparing a plan to guide our growth and development over the coming five years. The purpose of this strategy will be to clearly articulate what WCR aims to achieve and how it will deliver impact, guiding our decisions, investments, and research agenda for years to come. The road to building a five-year research strategy is long and winding—at least if you want it to reflect the concerns of your stakeholder community. Read on for more about where this journey has taken us, and the steps that still remain.

Join us for a deep dive into the history of coffee's most dastardly disease: Coffee leaf rust. Histories of coffee leaf rust often, rightly, focus on its the human and economic costs. Since the initial outbreak in the mid-nineteenth century, though, rust has also transformed the global coffee industry in other, less obvious ways. This talk explores how rust has helped shape today’s global coffee industry, and may continue to do so in the future. This virtual talk comes to you from Stuart McCook, author of Coffee Is Not Forever (2019).

The WCR Technical Manager coordinates and implements the genetic improvement strategy of World Coffee Research for Coffea arabica, C. canephora and interspecific hybrids. The person manages the breeding project portfolio to achieve technical strategy aligned to the WCR strategy.