News and knowledge

Mr. Raphael Baluku has been getting a lot of questions about his coffee trees recently. In November 2018, the 54-year-old farmer—in Maliba subcounty, Kasese District of western Uganda—collaborated with World Coffee Research on the installation of an on-farm technology trial (OFTT) plot at his farm.

At the beginning of October, a five-year, $36.4 million initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to build the agricultural sectors of coffee and cacao in five countries—El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and Peru—was announced by the project's lead implementation partner, the international nonprofit TechnoServe. World Coffee Research is proud to bring its expertise in coffee agricultural R&D to the effort, the Maximizing Opportunities in Coffee and Cacao in the Americas (MOCCA) Project.

Julio Alvarado Quintana has had a close relationship coffee spanning more than a decade. Over that time, he has progressed from coffee enthusiast, to coffee student while earning his master’s at the University of Udine, Trieste and Fondazione Ernersto Illy (aka illy University), to coffee researcher—he currently serves as a Research Technician contributing to WCR’s breeding program and agronomic trials in Central America. We talked to Julio to learn more about his journey and why coffee is so important to him.

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.