About the Catalog

About the Catalog

Infor­ma­tion is pow­er. There are dozens of wide­ly cul­ti­vat­ed Ara­bi­ca and Robus­ta cof­fee vari­eties around the world, and each is unique in its per­for­mance and adap­ta­tion to local con­di­tions. This cat­a­log brings urgent­ly need­ed infor­ma­tion to cof­fee farm­ers to help them decide which cof­fee is best for their sit­u­a­tion. Agro­nom­ic data — expect­ed yield, nutri­tion require­ments, opti­mal alti­tude, dis­ease and pest resis­tance, etc — about the wide­spread array of exist­ing cul­ti­vat­ed Ara­bi­ca and Robus­ta cof­fee vari­eties has nev­er been avail­able in an open-access for­mat before.

Because the life of a cof­fee tree is 20 – 30 years, the deci­sion pro­duc­ers make about which vari­ety to plant will have con­se­quences until the next gen­er­a­tion. If a farmer makes a poor deci­sion on vari­ety, the cumu­la­tive loss can be huge. Most cof­fee farm­ers — who earn their liveli­hoods based on the deci­sions they make about what kind of cof­fee to plant — don’t typ­i­cal­ly have access to trans­par­ent infor­ma­tion about avail­able vari­eties and how they dif­fer. The lack of a com­pre­hen­sive, up-to-date cof­fee cat­a­log puts farm­ers at risk and per­pet­u­ates chron­i­cal­ly low yields around the globe.

The pur­pose of the cat­a­log is to low­er the risk asso­ci­at­ed with cof­fee farm­ing by pro­vid­ing direct infor­ma­tion to farm­ers and oth­er farm ren­o­va­tion or plant­i­ng deci­sion-mak­ers to enable them to make an informed choice about what vari­ety is best for their cir­cum­stances. Choos­ing the right type of cof­fee low­ers the risk of dis­ease and pest loss­es, has con­se­quences for qual­i­ty in the cup, and will be crit­i­cal for cof­fee pro­duc­ers fac­ing rapid­ly chang­ing cli­mates. Choos­ing the cor­rect vari­ety — one that meets the farmer’s goals and needs — can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce loss­es due to diseases/​pests, increase pro­duc­tion vol­ume, and/​or increase quality.

Through­out the cof­fee-pro­duc­ing world, there is wide­spread need for replant­i­ng with young trees, trees resis­tant to major dis­eases and pests (includ­ing cof­fee berry dis­ease, cof­fee leaf rust, antes­tia bug and stem bor­er), and with improved vari­eties capa­ble of meet­ing the chal­lenges of the cli­mate crisis. 

Using the catalog

This cat­a­log aims to present infor­ma­tion for cof­fee pro­duc­ers and any­one work­ing with cof­fee plants about how dif­fer­ent vari­eties can be expect­ed to per­form under ide­al conditions.

Of course, cof­fee is not always grown under ide­al con­di­tions. Fac­tors such as envi­ron­ment, alti­tude, soil nutri­tion, weath­er, the age of the tree, and farm man­age­ment prac­tices can sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect a cof­fee tree’s yield, qual­i­ty, and health.

Because of this, it is impos­si­ble to give absolute data about cer­tain aspects of a variety’s per­for­mance (for exam­ple, cup qual­i­ty or yield). In those cas­es, we pro­vide a com­mon vari­ety (Catur­ra in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, SL28 in Africa) as a ref­er­ence in the descrip­tion of rel­e­vant vari­ables. If a farmer knows how Catur­ra or SL28 would per­form on their farm, giv­en their par­tic­u­lar cli­mate, soil, and farm prac­tices, they should be able to mea­sure the rel­a­tive per­for­mance of oth­er vari­eties against that knowledge.

The inten­tion of this cat­a­log is that those work­ing with cof­fee should be able to make informed deci­sions about which vari­ety will work best for their sit­u­a­tion and needs.

A liv­ing document

This cat­a­log of cof­fee vari­eties is a liv­ing doc­u­ment and will con­tin­ue to grow as more regions of the world are cov­ered and as new vari­eties are developed.