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[–] 33 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (16 children)

Brazil's Embrapa is trying to breed Robusta to have a taste profile more closely matching Arabica, whilst also resisting the heat better. Difficult challenge given Robusta tastes like burnt rubber.

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  • [–] 43 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    This is gonna be like the Gros Michel banana thing again isn't it - where decades from now almost none of the world's coffee will taste as good as it used to, and nobody quite knows why.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago* (4 children)

    I doubt because in that case we do have seeds of the plant and it can be put in a greenhouse, generally the situation is way different, i'il explain myself better:

    Gran michele is now extinct because of how it was cultivated; In practice, to avoid having seeds in the fruit, production was carried out using cuttings, so practically all Gran Michele plants were clones of a group of other Gran Michele plants, meaning that genetic mutations never developed. Since none of them had developed a mutation capable of resisting a fungus (the name of which I cannot remember), they ALL died and we simply didn't had seeds

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    You can still buy the Gros Michel banana nowadays. It's not extinct, but is a rare and expensive speciality, rather than the common type of banana we see on the shelves like it used to be.

    $37 USD per banana, on this particular site

    If climate change makes growing Arabica coffee commercially non-viable at scale and all the growers move to hardier alternatives, then Arabica will still exist - absolutely - but instead of being the coffee you can drink every day it will also become a rare and expensive speciality, just like the banana.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Wow that's gone up me and a few coworkers ordered a box a couple of years ago and it was like $9 per banana.

    They were good, I see the appeal of the variety, but they were not $9 banana good. Let alone $37 banana good.

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  • [+] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I've had a couple good roubustas, but it is a fickle breed to roast. If done wrong, even a medium roast will come out tasting like Folger's. Moderately higher quality Folger's due to the freshness, of course, but still Folger's.

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