Rust-resistant Centroamericano demonstrates the quality potential of new F1 hybrid varieties.
BY CHRIS RYAN
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Cover photo courtesy of Alliance for Coffee Excellence
The new coffee variety Centroamericano made a prominent leap onto the radar of many coffee professionals by earning a score 0f 90 points at the recent Cup of Excellence coffee competition in Nicaragua. The coffee, grown by Gonzalo Adán Castillo Moreno on his farm Las Promesas de San Blas in the Nueva Segovia region, placed second in the competition.
While any 90-point coffee is remarkable, Centroamericano is particularly noteworthy because it is an F1 hybrid—a brand-new variety that recently was made commercially available to coffee farmers, only in Central America. According to a press release from World Coffee Research and Cup of Excellence parent organization the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, F1 hybrids are created by “crossing genetically distant Arabica parents and using the first-generation (F1) offspring.” The result is higher-performing crops: In maize, for example, production has increased six-fold in the last 60 years following the introduction of maize hybrids.
Centroamericano is resistant to the fungal disease coffee leaf rust, which has decimated coffee production in parts of Central America in recent years. However, the variety is also high-yielding, according to World Coffee Research: “In breeding evaluations, it showed production increases of 22 to 47 percent over the standard varieties in the region,” the press release stated.
And now, given its recent success at Cup of Excellence, Centroamericano has also demonstrated publicly that it also produces high quality in the cup. For World Coffee Research, this variety reveals great promise. “We couldn’t be more thrilled about this,” said Tim Schilling, CEO of World Coffee Research, in the press release. “It validates our instinct that F1 hybrids are absolutely essential for the future of coffee. F1 hybrids can combine traits that matter most to farmers—higher yields and disease resistance—with the trait that matters most to consumers—taste. That has always been a tradeoff in the past. Coffee just took a huge leap into the future.”
Centroamericano is a cross between the Ethiopian variety Rume Sudan and the rust-resistant T5296, a variety used mainly in breeding and not commonly seen in production. The variety was created via a consortium that included French research institute CIRAD and Promecafe, a network of national coffee institutes in Central America. More about Centroamericano can be found here.
For the Alliance of Coffee Excellence, showcasing the variety in its competition is an exciting development. “The 90+ score from the Cup of Excellence competition in Nicaragua establishes these new F1 varieties as entirely viable at the highest levels of quality,” said Darrin Daniel, Executive Director for the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, in the press release. “We look forward to continuing our partnership with World Coffee Research to collect and share information about varieties entered into competition in countries where WCR and the Alliance for Coffee Excellence work.”
The Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence coffees will be auctioned on June 1, including 24 30-kilo boxes of the Centroamericano coffee from Las Promesas de San Blas. A cupping of the winning Nicaraguan coffees will also take place May 31 at the Alliance for Coffee Excellence lab in Portland, Ore., from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. No RSVP is required.
