History of Robusta

Intro­duc­tion

The roots of Cof­fea canepho­ra, com­mon­ly called robus­ta[1], trace back hun­dreds of thou­sands of years to the humid, under­sto­ry ever­green forests in trop­i­cal areas of cen­tral and west­ern sub-Saha­ran Africa — a region with expan­sive geo­graph­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion from Guinea to Ugan­da to Ango­la (Dussert et al., 1999). It is one of the two species in the Cof­fea genus (which com­pris­es a total of 131 species; Davis & Rako­tona­so­lo, 2021) that are com­mer­cial­ly cul­ti­vat­ed on a glob­al scale, and it is visu­al­ly rec­og­niz­able by its unique­ly large blos­soms and wide, spread­ing canopy.

Through­out his­to­ry, this species has been grown in numer­ous forms and eco­types, and in regions beyond its birth­place. Today, robus­ta is cul­ti­vat­ed com­mer­cial­ly in about 20 coun­tries world­wide, char­ac­ter­ized by warm cli­mates and/​or high humid­i­ty. Robusta’s genet­ic diver­si­ty is vast, and while sci­en­tists have been research­ing this since the 1980s, there is still much to uncov­er about the species. Nonethe­less, one thing about robus­ta is cer­tain: it has dra­mat­i­cal­ly evolved into a major mar­ket force.

In recent decades, robus­ta cul­ti­va­tion has steadi­ly increased, ris­ing from 25% to 40% of total glob­al cof­fee pro­duc­tion since the ear­ly 1990s (Aba­cus­bio, 2023, p. 13). Until now, Cof­fea ara­bi­ca—the oth­er glob­al­ly dom­i­nant com­mer­cial cof­fee species — has held sway over most of the cof­fee mar­ket due to pref­er­ences for its cup qual­i­ty. Many fac­tors, includ­ing increas­ing demand for cof­fee, have led to expan­sions in robus­ta pro­duc­tion in recent years. In 2023 alone, 177 mil­lion 60-kilo­gram bags of cof­fee were con­sumed world­wide — a 2.2% increase from the 2022 – 23 pro­duc­tion year and a strik­ing 4.5% jump from 2019 – 2020 (Inter­na­tion­al Cof­fee Orga­ni­za­tion, 2024) — and demand is not expect­ed to slow down.

With soar­ing demand at cen­ter stage, along­side the expect­ed neg­a­tive effects of cli­mate change and lim­it­ed his­tor­i­cal invest­ment in cof­fee agri­cul­tur­al inno­va­tion, an expand­ed role for robus­ta in the glob­al cof­fee mar­ket is both prac­ti­cal and nec­es­sary. How­ev­er, under­stand­ing of robus­ta is some­what lim­it­ed among buy­ers, con­sumers, and sci­en­tists alike, and its full poten­tial in meet­ing mar­ket demand has yet to be realized.

About robus­ta — a species of untapped potential

Robus­ta has its wild ori­gins in cen­tral and west­ern sub-Saha­ran Africa, main­ly in the humid under­sto­ry of low-ele­va­tion ever­green forests (50 – 1500 m), but some­times in sea­son­al­ly dry humid forests or gallery forests (Davis et al., 2006).

Much of the move­ment of robus­ta beyond its cen­ters of ori­gin and domes­ti­ca­tion, as well as the increase in the pop­u­lar­i­ty of its pro­duc­tion dur­ing the ear­ly 1900s, can be attrib­uted to the spread of cof­fee leaf rust — a fun­gal dis­ease that rav­aged ara­bi­ca cof­fee plants and remains a sig­nif­i­cant glob­al con­cern. One of the great­est ben­e­fits of robus­ta pro­duc­tion is that some vari­eties pos­sess an excep­tion­al­ly high nat­ur­al resis­tance to major pests and dis­eases that impede suc­cess­ful and prof­itable pro­duc­tion, includ­ing rust; these plants can often thrive under harsh con­di­tions (Cam­puzano-Duque & Blair, 2022). This resilience or robust­ness is one rea­son why Cof­fea canepho­ra is often col­lo­qui­al­ly referred to as robus­ta (nomen­cla­ture that was first used by Lin­den in 1900; Dagoon, 2005).

Glob­al growth in demand for robus­ta has been dri­ven by the advent of sol­u­ble cof­fee and the increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of robus­ta in blends. The expan­sion of robus­ta pro­duc­tion to meet this demand has been pos­si­ble because robus­ta can grow in areas unsuit­able for ara­bi­ca. For exam­ple, it can pro­duce high crop yields and main­tain stress resilience in hot­ter, more humid tem­per­a­ture ranges than ara­bi­ca, which typ­i­cal­ly occur at low­er ele­va­tions (between 200 – 800 meters above sea lev­el; Slipchenko, 2021). Robus­ta plants typ­i­cal­ly have greater crop yields, con­tain high­er lev­els of caf­feine, low­er lev­els of sug­ar, high­er lev­els of sol­u­ble solids, and are less sus­cep­ti­ble to dam­ag­ing pests and dis­eases (Goldem­berg et al., 2015).

Many observers spec­u­late that robus­ta may increas­ing­ly serve as an alter­na­tive to ara­bi­ca as ris­ing tem­per­a­tures and altered pre­cip­i­ta­tion pat­terns make ara­bi­ca cul­ti­va­tion more chal­leng­ing in the com­ing decades (Bunn et al., 2015; de Aquino et al., 2022; Dinh et al., 2022; Kath et al., 2022; Kath et al., 2023). Despite the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by robus­ta, it faces con­sid­er­able chal­lenges of its own. One pri­ma­ry threat to long-term, sus­tain­able robus­ta pro­duc­tion from diverse ori­gins is the some­times steep dis­par­i­ties in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty[2] and prof­itabil­i­ty[3], caused by numer­ous fac­tors, includ­ing labor costs and increased com­pe­ti­tion from oth­er crops. Addi­tion­al­ly, despite its oft-cit­ed ​“robust­ness,” robus­ta is still sen­si­tive to envi­ron­men­tal dis­tur­bances. Robus­ta plants gen­er­al­ly have high pre­cip­i­ta­tion needs, and recent research sug­gests that robusta’s abil­i­ty to thrive in hot­ter cli­mates may have been pre­vi­ous­ly over­stat­ed; tem­per­a­tures over 20.5 degrees Cel­sius can have sig­nif­i­cant­ly neg­a­tive impact on yields (Kath et al., 2020; Tournebize et al., 2022).

More­over, many robus­ta vari­eties are at least some­what sus­cep­ti­ble to key dis­eases and pests, such as cof­fee wilt dis­ease, red blis­ter dis­ease, stem bor­er, cof­fee berry dis­ease, cof­fee berry bor­er, nema­todes, and even cof­fee leaf rust, among oth­ers (Vega et al., 2006).

Anoth­er key dif­fer­ence between robus­ta and ara­bi­ca per­tains to taste and cup qual­i­ty (Leroy et al., 2006). Cof­fee brewed from robus­ta beans is often low­er in acid­i­ty, high­er in bit­ter­ness, and more ​“full-bod­ied” due to its pyrazine con­tent (Sem­mel­roch & Grosch, 1995), an aro­mat­ic com­pound known for its earth­i­ness. While the cup qual­i­ty of robus­ta is often dis­par­aged, when han­dled and processed prop­er­ly, it can serve as a prod­uct for spe­cial­ty mar­kets (Ugan­da Cof­fee Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty, 2019). Agro­nom­ic and post-har­vest pro­cess­ing efforts, includ­ing qual­i­ty con­trol of fer­men­ta­tion process­es, can make an imme­di­ate and cru­cial dif­fer­ence in robus­ta pro­duc­tion and qual­i­ty. How­ev­er, there remains sig­nif­i­cant unex­plored ter­ri­to­ry in opti­miz­ing robusta’s per­for­mance in the field and its cup qual­i­ty on a com­mer­cial scale. 

The sto­ry of a species: The his­to­ry of robusta’s cul­ti­va­tion and dispersal

The first doc­u­ment­ed cul­ti­va­tion of robus­ta began around 1870 in Con­go, using genet­ic mate­r­i­al from the Lomani Riv­er region in what is now the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go (Berthaud & Char­ri­er, 1988). How­ev­er, it is like­ly that small-scale pro­duc­tion by indi­vid­ual farm­ers and their fam­i­lies had been ongo­ing for decades pri­or to this point. A sub­type of robus­ta called ​“koil­lou” (lat­er renamed ​“conilon” through lin­guis­tic dis­tor­tion when it was intro­duced to Brazil) was observed in the wild by the French in 1880 between Gabon and the mouth of the Con­go Riv­er, main­ly along the Kouilou-Niari Riv­er region. The species was named by the botanist Louis Pierre in 1895. Pierre, who worked at the Muséum Nation­al d’Histoire Naturelle in France, received a sam­ple of the plant col­lect­ed in Gabon by the Rev­erend Théophile Klaine. The name—Cof­fea canepho­ra var. Pierre ex A. Froehn­er — was first pub­lished along with a descrip­tion of the species by Froehn­er (1897).

One year lat­er, Edouard Luja was sent to col­lect species with eco­nom­ic poten­tial in what was then called Bel­gian Con­go (now the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go) in prepa­ra­tion for the 1900 Paris Expo­si­tion. Dur­ing this mis­sion, Luja col­lect­ed sev­er­al thou­sand seeds from a ​“new” cof­fee species found in an ear­ly robus­ta plan­ta­tion in the region (Benoit, 1968). Bel­gian Con­go became one of the prin­ci­pal cen­ters of diver­si­ty, from which new lines were dis­trib­uted through­out the tropics.

At the turn of the cen­tu­ry, the species began to spread to oth­er parts of the world. Robus­ta seeds from Con­go were sent to Brus­sels, and from there they were dis­patched under the name ​“robus­ta” to Java, Indone­sia, where they were quick­ly accept­ed by farm­ers due to their high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and appar­ent resis­tance to cof­fee leaf rust — espe­cial­ly as a major out­break of the dis­ease affect­ed C. ara­bi­ca plants in South­east Asia in the late 1800s (Cramer, 1957). In fact, it was in Indone­sia that pio­neer­ing, sys­tem­at­ic robus­ta breed­ing was first con­duct­ed (Fer­w­er­da, 1948). These mate­ri­als were lat­er enriched with genet­ic mate­r­i­al from Gabon and Ugan­da. Around the same time, oth­er robus­ta mate­r­i­al select­ed from wild pop­u­la­tions was intro­duced to areas of Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Ugan­da (Char­ri­er and Eskes, 1997).

From here, robus­ta con­tin­ued to spread around the world, enter­ing India via Java, with lat­er intro­duc­tions from West Africa. Mate­r­i­al select­ed in Java was rein­tro­duced to Cen­tral Africa from 1910 onward and to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go (then Bel­gian Con­go) in 1916 at the Insti­tut Nation­al pour l’É­tude Agronomique du Con­go (INEAC), which became the cen­ter for selec­tion from 1930 to 1960. With­in Africa, robus­ta was pro­duced in Mada­gas­car, Ugan­da, Ghana, and Ivory Coast. Endem­ic vari­ants often inter­min­gled with those intro­duced from com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion in oth­er parts of the continent.

Robus­ta was lat­er intro­duced to Latin Amer­i­ca, with the conilon group intro­duced in Brazil in 1912 to Espir­i­tu San­to. Addi­tion­al com­mer­cial intro­duc­tions occurred in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca via Guatemala between 1930 and 1935. 

Today, just six coun­tries — Viet­nam, Brazil, Indone­sia, Ugan­da, India, and Côte d’Ivoire — pro­duce 95% of the world’s robus­ta (Aba­cus­bio, 2023). Laos, Tan­za­nia, Mada­gas­car, and Thai­land fol­low these nations in pro­duc­tion, mak­ing up the remain­der of the top ten pro­duc­ing regions world­wide. Coun­tries in Asia and Ocea­nia are col­lec­tive­ly the largest pro­duc­ers of robus­ta, gen­er­at­ing 60% of the world’s out­put at 41.5 mil­lion 60 kg bags annu­al­ly. This region is fol­lowed by South Amer­i­ca, which pro­duces 28% of the world’s robus­ta, gen­er­at­ing 19.8 mil­lion bags of cof­fee in the 2020 – 21 year (Aba­cus­bio, 2023).

Dis­cov­er­ing robusta’s genet­ic diversity

Robus­ta cof­fee has a wide scope of genet­ic diver­si­ty, with many dis­tinct sub-pop­u­la­tions. Wild pop­u­la­tions are the pri­ma­ry genet­ic rel­a­tives of robus­ta cof­fee, and cul­ti­vat­ed cof­fee has changed rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle from its wild prog­en­i­tors. Many unknown vari­a­tions, includ­ing poten­tial­ly ben­e­fi­cial traits relat­ed to pro­duc­tion and cup qual­i­ty, exist with­in the robus­ta gene pool. By and large, these hid­den vari­a­tions have yet to be explored and uti­lized by sci­en­tists and breed­ers. Deep­en­ing the under­stand­ing of robus­ta diver­si­ty and its inte­gra­tion into breed­ing pro­grams is cru­cial for con­tin­u­ous and long-term genet­ic gains.

Robus­ta is also a genet­ic rel­a­tive of ara­bi­ca (Baw­in et al., 2020; Chad­burn & Davis, 2017; Scal­abrin et al., 2020) and is close­ly relat­ed enough that his­tor­i­cal breed­ing efforts have suc­cess­ful­ly trans­ferred some dis­ease resis­tance from robus­ta into ara­bi­ca cul­ti­vars (Bet­ten­court, 1973). Poten­tial dis­ease and pest resis­tance trans­fer­ence remains pos­si­ble for future breed­ing efforts.

Many dif­fer­ent com­mon terms are used to describe robus­ta in the areas where it is grown. These terms include ​“robus­ta,” ​“conilon,” ​“ngan­da,” ​“koillou/​quillou,” and oth­ers. These terms are gen­er­al­ly region­al and col­lo­qui­al, and they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly cor­re­spond to spe­cif­ic genet­i­cal­ly dis­tinct vari­eties or clones.

What sci­en­tists do know is that robus­ta is a diploid species divid­ed into two broad genet­ic groups: Guinean and Con­golese. The Guinean group — which is gen­er­al­ly char­ac­ter­ized by nar­row intern­odes, high caf­feine con­tent, low bean weight, drought resis­tance, sec­ondary branch­ing, and ear­ly har­vest — orig­i­nat­ed in cen­tral-west Africa. In con­trast, the Con­golese group — which typ­i­cal­ly has high­er rust resis­tance, medi­um caf­feine con­tent, high bean weight, drought sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty, larg­er intern­odes, tall growth, and late har­vest­ing — orig­i­nat­ed in cen­tral Africa (Her­rera & Lam­bot, 2017). Among these two groups, the Con­golese is the most wide­spread. Addi­tion­al­ly, with­in each group, there are dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions or sub­groups (see Fig­ure 1 below).

It is note­wor­thy to high­light that there have been mas­sive intro­duc­tions of Con­golese-type trees into areas of Côte d’Ivoire that are home to wild endem­ic pop­u­la­tions from the Guinean gene pool, which threat­en the genet­ic integri­ty of wild pop­u­la­tions from the Guinean gene pool (Gnapi et al., 2022).

To con­serve robusta’s vast diver­si­ty, field gene banks in sev­er­al pro­duc­ing coun­tries in Africa and Asia have estab­lished repos­i­to­ries of robus­ta genet­ics (Bramel et al., 2017). Tar­get­ed, glob­al­ly coor­di­nat­ed robus­ta col­lec­tion and exchange were con­duct­ed start­ing in the 1960s from ​“cen­ters of domes­ti­ca­tion.” Impor­tant col­lect­ing mis­sions includ­ed a mis­sion to Côte d’Ivoire, which col­lect­ed 700 wild geno­types by ORSTROM in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cen­tre de Coopéra­tion Inter­na­tionale en Recher­ché Agronomique pour le Développe­ment. Addi­tion­al­ly, the species has been col­lect­ed in Guinea, Cameroon, the Con­go, and the Cen­tral African Repub­lic. From these col­lect­ing mis­sions, robus­ta was intro­duced to field genebanks around the world, includ­ing in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mada­gas­car, India, and Cos­ta Rica, among oth­ers. Wher­ev­er robus­ta germplasm has been intro­duced, it has faced — and con­tin­ues to face — sig­nif­i­cant man­age­ment and genet­ic ero­sion chal­lenges (Bramel et al., 2017). 

Robus­ta in farm­ers’ fields

Because robus­ta nec­es­sar­i­ly cross-pol­li­nates — a sin­gle robus­ta clone can­not suc­cess­ful­ly pol­li­nate its own flow­ers, as ara­bi­ca trees can do — but requires pollen from two dif­fer­ent types of plants to pro­duce new cher­ries (sci­en­tists call this ​“allog­a­mous”; Nowak, 2011) — sub­types grown in the same field typ­i­cal­ly inter­breed (Thomas, 1935). For this rea­son, it is nec­es­sary for farm­ers to grow more than one type of robus­ta clone in their fields to ensure suc­cess­ful pol­li­na­tion and fruit pro­duc­tion. Robus­ta plan­ta­tions are there­fore nev­er genet­i­cal­ly uni­form. His­tor­i­cal­ly, robus­ta farm­ers had lit­tle aware­ness of which vari­eties or sub­types they were grow­ing, although this aware­ness is increasing.

Most cur­rent­ly cul­ti­vat­ed robus­ta con­sists either of trees orig­i­nat­ing from open-pol­li­nat­ed seeds (Labouisse et al., 2020) or mul­ti-line clones (these vari­eties, which are also called ​“poly­clon­al,” are com­prised of an inten­tion­al mix of genet­i­cal­ly dis­tinct clones; Cam­puzano-Duque & Blair, 2022; Mon­tagnon et al., 2003; Berthaud & Char­ri­er, 1998).

How­ev­er, not all robus­ta types can suc­cess­ful­ly grow togeth­er in a field. The cross-com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of types is genet­i­cal­ly con­trolled; in oth­er words, some vari­eties are unable to fer­til­ize one anoth­er (Lash­er­mes et al., 1996; Prakash, 2018). So far, research on opti­mal com­bi­na­tions of sub­types in pro­duc­tion has been scarce, but one key con­sid­er­a­tion is simul­ta­ne­ous flow­er­ing (Sil­va et al., 2024).

In dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion regions, the release and dis­tri­b­u­tion of such mix­es to farm­ers is han­dled dif­fer­ent­ly. For exam­ple, in West Africa, it is com­mon for breed­ers to cre­ate poly­clon­al seed vari­eties (i.e., mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent types of robus­ta are dis­trib­uted togeth­er in the same seed pack­ets to farm­ers). In Brazil, it is more com­mon for breed­ers to cre­ate mul­ti­ple unique clones that are then test­ed for com­pat­i­bil­i­ty; the high­est-per­form­ing com­ple­men­tary clones are then prop­a­gat­ed and released to farm­ers as clon­al­ly prop­a­gat­ed seedlings (Depo­lo et al., 2022; Prakash, 2018).

The future of robusta

The world may soon face chal­lenges in keep­ing up with the ris­ing demand for robus­ta, just as it cur­rent­ly does for ara­bi­ca (Aba­cus­bio, 2023). While some strong breed­ing ini­tia­tives have emerged at nation­al cof­fee insti­tutes across Asia, Africa, and Latin Amer­i­ca, there remains a sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ty for sci­en­tists to bet­ter under­stand robusta’s genet­ic diver­si­ty and lever­age it through mod­ern­ized breed­ing ini­tia­tives. This can strength­en the species’ long-term via­bil­i­ty for farm­ers by focus­ing on traits such as yield, dis­ease resis­tance, cli­mate resilience, and selec­tive improve­ments in cup qual­i­ty. Col­lab­o­ra­tions between sci­en­tists and insti­tu­tions can enhance shared ser­vices and tools, expand knowl­edge, and accel­er­ate efforts to devel­op and deploy inno­va­tions. Clear­ing a path for trans­for­ma­tive inno­va­tion in robus­ta will help safe­guard the well-being of cof­fee farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties and the glob­al cof­fee indus­try as a whole.

Foot­notes

[1] Through­out this essay and the cat­a­log gen­er­al­ly, we use this term​“robus­ta” to refer to the entire C. canepho­ra species and all its subtypes.

[2] Com­pare 1.9 bags/​ha in Côte d’Ivoire to 10.4 or 47.7 bags/​ha in Ugan­da and Viet­nam respec­tive­ly; see Table 1 in Aba­cus­bio, 2023.

[3] See Mar­tinez, 2023; Hasan et al., 2020.

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