New $1.5 Million Initiative Will Modernize Breeding Tools for Global Coffee Resilience

Key takeaways

• Accelerating the pace of innovation. New investment focuses on creating high-efficiency molecular breeding tools to reduce the decades-long timeline currently required to deliver new coffee varieties to farmers.
• Targeting critical disease threats. This research will identify genetic markers for devastating pests and diseases, including coffee leaf rust, coffee berry disease, coffee fruit rot, and coffee berry borer.
• Public-private collective investment. A co-funding model brings together public sector funding through the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) with private sector investment from Taylors of Harrogate and Coffee Circle, and WCR member companies. 
• Global scientific partnership. The project draws on scientific excellence from researchers at World Coffee Research, the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones de Café (Cenicafé), the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), and the USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS). 

[PORTLAND, Or. – June 5, 2026] – World Coffee Research (WCR) today announced a $1.5 million USD project to modernize coffee breeding through the development of high-precision tools to make breeding faster, better, and cheaper. These high-impact breeding tools bring the future closer, enabling WCR and its network of global partners to accelerate the creation of high-performing varieties that will define the next era of coffee. Using such tools, breeding timelines can be shortened by half or more. The project is supported by a grant from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) and matched by industry co-investment from Taylors of Harrogate, Coffee Circle, and other WCR member companies.  

While other major crops have benefited from modern genomic revolutions, coffee breeding has remained largely stuck in traditional, time-consuming methods. Record-high prices in 2025 reflect the profound USD$126–405 million per year underinvestment in coffee R&D and the urgent need for more productive and resilient varieties that can survive evolving environmental stressors. 

"Better coffee starts with better trees," said Dr. Jennifer “Vern” Long, CEO of World Coffee Research. "This project is about building foundational technology that will benefit our entire sector. By developing these tools and making them available to researchers globally—as well as putting them into immediate use in Innovea Global Coffee Breeding Network—we are providing the industry with the insurance it needs to thrive while ensuring that even under-resourced breeding programs can participate in the next era of coffee innovation."

“Taylors depends on the success of many origins around the world to source the high quality coffee our customers love, and their success depends on coffee farmers having access to new, climate-resilient varieties as quickly as possible. We’re excited to support this work because bringing coffee breeding into the future is essential for farmers and essential for our entire industry,” says Keith Writer, Supply Director, Taylors of Harrogate. 

"For many people, myself included, starting the day without a cup of coffee is hard to imagine, which is why coffee farmers need varieties that can withstand significant disease and pest pressures while maintaining yield and quality under unpredictable growing conditions," said FFAR Scientific Program Director Dr. Kathy Munkvold. "This research will equip breeders with the tools they need to accelerate the development of improved coffee varieties, helping farmers reduce losses and strengthen productivity."

Super-charging the world’s global engines for coffee breeding

Traditional coffee breeding  requires years of field observation to screen plants for disease resistance. This project introduces new tools that allow breeders to adopt an updated breeding approach called “marker-assisted selection.”

The project supercharges global breeding pipelines by replacing slow, observational methods with data-driven precision. By identifying genetic markers for disease resistance, breeders can look directly at a plant’s DNA to confirm if the plant has the genes for disease resistance in a matter of weeks rather than waiting years for field observation results. This molecular breeding approach utilizes the plant's own natural genetic diversity to accelerate breeding without involving genetic modification, shortening the typical timeline to develop a new variety from 25-30 years by half or more. 

 The first of three technical workstreams focuses on Arabica genetic marker mapping for devastating pests and diseases, including coffee leaf rust, coffee berry disease, coffee fruit rot, and coffee berry borer, which together costs the industry hundreds of millions of dollars  in lost production annually. 

The second workstream creates a foundational genotyping tool for Coffea canephora (commonly called robusta)—a species now accounting for over 40% of global production. The tool utilizes 3,500 genetic markers to create a modern genetic roadmap for robusta, allowing the rapid and accurate selection of high-performing parent trees in robusta breeding programs. A similar tool was developed for arabica in 2025 and is already being utilized in the Innovea Global Coffee Breeding Network to shorten arabica breeding timelines and enable the discovery of disease resistance markers. 

The third workstream trains national breeders from multiple origin countries in these genomic approaches, ensuring these advanced tools are integrated into local programs to deliver improved trees to farmers' fields faster. 

Strategic Partnerships to Advance the Sector

This initiative leverages the technical excellence of a global network of partners. In East Africa, WCR is working alongside the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) to advance molecular tools for coffee berry disease resistance. The USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) at the Tropical Agriculture Research Station (TARS) in Puerto Rico will conduct screening for coffee leaf rust and fungal pathogens like anthracnose. And in Colombia, Cenicafé is collaborating on coffee berry borer marker development, as well as leveraging their global breeding expertise to train breeders from around the world on how to apply molecular tools to lower the cost and increase the speed of developing new varieties.  

“Cenicafe is pleased to be part of this collaborative research program and to host plant breeders from around the world. The future of global coffee production and climate adaptation will depend on scientific excellence and the development of productive, resilient, high-quality varieties.  Collaborative science ensures the best cup remains on the tables of millions,” said Santiago Jaramillo, Scientific and Technological Research Director, Cenicafé.

“This initiative is a critical step in closing coffee’s long-standing innovation gap and accelerating breeding,” said Dr. Tania Humphrey, WCR’s Senior Director,  Innovation and the project’s Principal Investigator. “This drastically reduces the cost and risk of breeding, allowing us to deliver better plants to farmers faster than ever before. Through shared science, we can advance the goals of the entire global coffee industry. We are thrilled to be using these approaches in our own breeding program and sharing them with breeders worldwide through the Innovea Breeding Network.”