By Oliver Griffin
SAO PAULO, Aug 28 (Reuters) – A new study has challenged the widely held belief that robusta coffee is more resilient to climate change than other varieties, with its lead author in an interview calling it an “internet myth” based on flawed research that overlooked the crop’s drought intolerance and other vulnerabilities.
Often derided as cheap filler compared with arabica beans, tens of millions of bags of robusta coffee are supplied to global markets each year, the majority from Vietnam and Brazil.
The findings, published late on Thursday in the Wiley journal Sustainable Development, are a challenge for those advocating robusta as a means of weathering climate change in the coffee industry. As demand for robusta grows around the world, any reassessment of its climate resilience has implications for farmers, traders and consumers.
Earlier this month, a Vietnamese coffee official told Reuters that adapting to climate change was no longer a future concern but an urgent necessity to safeguard output.
Media, farmers and researchers often point to robusta’s heat resilience as the coffee industry’s answer to climate change, but the new paper in Sustainable Development found that previous assessments should be considered provisional at best. It cited research errors such as treating irrigated farms as optimal growing areas.
Robusta’s greater resilience to climate change is an “internet myth” that emerged about a decade ago, Aaron Davis, senior research leader of crops and global change at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the paper’s lead author, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.
“I found it troubling that people weren’t interpreting the science correctly and that they were advocating robusta as the savior of the coffee sector under climate change,” Davis said. “Robusta is more heat-tolerant than arabica, but it’s drought-intolerant.”
Producers such as Brazil, Vietnam and India lack climate suitability for growing robusta, the paper found, pointing to the use of irrigation to ensure that the coffee plants receive enough water and ensure profitability.
Earlier studies have sought to highlight robusta’s resilience, suggesting the beans are more resistant to drought and act as a boon for farmers.
Any expansion of robusta coffee production must account for the crop’s vulnerabilities, the paper said, adding that growers in some regions already face serious problems with availability of water for irrigation.
The study added that there are inherent risks to relying on irrigation for robusta’s profitability and perhaps even survival.
“The global coffee supply needs major structural and systemic change,” Davis said, “if it’s to survive over the long term.”
(Reporting by Oliver Griffin in Sao Paulo; Editing by Manuela Andreoni and Matthew Lewis)
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