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Regenerative farming is another potential solution coffee trees, which are called accessions. Maintaining funds to keep all their facilities running, leading to
that’s gaining interest, as it offers a holistic approach these gene banks is incredibly expensive. Sarada the loss of trees each year. “A lot of the countries that
to tackling the coffee crisis. This type of agriculture Krishnan, director of horticulture and the Center for hold these gene banks are resource-poor countries,
goes beyond organic and sustainable farming in that Global Initiatives at the Denver Botanic Gardens, is and when the government doesn’t see immediate
it focuses on rebuilding soil health and restoring eco- leading World Coffee Research’s Global Conservation results coming out, then they don’t see the need to
systems by incorporating practices like cover crop- Strategy for Coffee. The strategy has two main goals: support them,” Krishnan says.
ping, composting, crop rotation, and no-tillage farm- to shore up funding and resources for key coffee gene The Global Conservation Strategy for Coffee
ing. Besides improving the quality of the soil for future banks and ensure accessibility of bank resources. seeks to create a global database that facilitates access
crops, regenerative agriculture also helps increase According to the article, “Good Genes: Genetic to information and coffee plants between gene banks
water retention in dry regions where drought is in- Diversity And The Future of Coffee” (Fresh Cup and researchers and breeders. This strategy is not
creasingly a problem. Magazine, 2017), many of the vital gene banks that only beneficial for preserving the genetic resources
safeguard coffee are facing hardship, resulting in of coffee, but also for providing farmers with more
We decided to explore these two solutions further and some of their valuable genetic resources being lost resilient varieties of crops in a changing climate. With
learn more about the implications they have for coffee as trees go unmaintained and die. While CATIE and more resources and cooperation, gene banks may
farmers; to understand what it would take to imple- other Latin American gene banks have relatively provide a critical piece of the puzzle to help secure
ment them, and how it could help in tackling the advanced operations, they still lack the necessary the future of coffee.
coffee crisis.

Preserving Coffee Genetic Resources

Within the walls of the Tropical Agricultural
Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in
Turrialba, Costa Rica lies a gene bank of nearly 2,000
varieties of coffee seeds — one of the most import-
ant institutions to the future of coffee production. A
few years ago, World Coffee Research and Global Crop
Diversity Trust (Crop Trust) formed a Global Con-
servation Strategy for Coffee to protect coffee’s ge-
netic resources from being lost at a rapid rate.
Gene banks house seeds from an extensive as-
sortment of varieties, including active and inactive
varieties. Gene banks catalog and conserve these
varieties, and share them with plant breeders and
farmers. Plant breeders cross-breed different variet-
ies to attempt to develop new varieties that can sur-
vive in harsh climate conditions or other future
challenges, such as the emergence of a new disease.
Farmers can request samples of crops to see how they
fare under conditions on their farms.
The total world market for coffee is estimated
at over US$173 billion by the International Coffee
Organization. The coffee value chain provides liveli-
hoods for an estimated 125 million people in over
seventy countries. However, those who produce
coffee have seen climate-related factors, such as high-
er temperatures, droughts, and diseases, decrease
yields and quality. Gene banks have helped to preserve
the diversity and vibrancy of coffee.
While most grain crops are frozen in order to
preserve them for hundreds of years, coffee is a trop-
ical crop that must be preserved in expensive “field”
gene banks. These gene banks house row after row of

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