A naturally decaffeinated coffee plant has been discovered. Coffee from the new strain could be tastier than existing decaf brews, which can lose flavour compounds when caffeine is extracted with solvents.
Other caffeine-free plants have been reported, but the latest comes from the same genetic stock as today鈥檚 elite commercial strains. This means the decaffeinated trait should be relatively easy to breed into popular types of coffee.
鈥淭his is the first report of a decaffeinated variety of Coffea arabica,鈥� says Paulo Mazzafera, head of the team at the University of Campinas, Brazil, which isolated the strains. 鈥淭his species is the most cultivated species in the world, responsible for more than 75 per cent of traded coffee,鈥� he says.
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The discovery is welcome news for an industry which has struggled to cross elite varieties with more distantly related decaffeinated species.
鈥淪o far, caffeine-free natural coffees have been Madagascan species which are outside the mainstream, and not easy to breed from,鈥� says Pablo Dubois, head of operations at the International Coffee Organization, in London, UK.
鈥淭his should be a step forward in terms of getting high quality decaffeinated coffee,鈥� says Dubois, not least because extraction of caffeine with solvents would no longer be necessary. 鈥淭here鈥檚 always a risk of losing flavour compounds, although there are examples of very good flavour in today鈥檚 decaffeinated products.鈥�
Tree screening
Mazzafera and his colleagues discovered three naturally decaffeinated varieties after screening 3000 Ethiopian coffee trees, representing 300 strains. Experiments on the plants demonstrated that they lacked caffeine synthase, the enzyme in leaves that converts a compound called theobromine into caffeine.
As well as eliminating the need for solvent extraction, the discovery could also be an alternative to decaffeinated plants created by knocking out the gene for the same enzyme via genetic engineering (快猫短视频, 18 June 2003). Some consumers are unlikely to accept these.
Mazzafera says that it might be possible to produce commercial decaffeinated coffee directly from the newly discovered strains within five years.
鈥淚 haven鈥檛 tasted them yet, but in general, C. arabica tastes OK,鈥� he says. Programmes to breed the trait into existing elite strains could take longer, perhaps 15 years, he says.
鈥淚t would also provide a way for developing countries to compete with big companies which produce industrially decaffeinated coffee,鈥� says Mazzafera.
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