• DOI:10.1038/429826a
• Corpus ID: 4428420

Plant biochemistry: A naturally decaffeinated arabica coffee

@article{Silvarolla2004PlantBA,
  title={Plant biochemistry: A naturally decaffeinated arabica coffee},
  author={Maria Bernadete Silvarolla and Paulo Mazzafera and Luiz Carlos Fazuoli},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2004},
  volume={429},
  pages={826-826}
}

• M. B. Silvarolla, P. Mazzafera, L. C. Fazuoli
• Published 24 June 2004
• Biology, Medicine
• Nature

The adverse side effects of caffeine have increased the market for decaffeinated coffee to about 10% of coffee consumption worldwide (http://www.ncausa.org), despite the loss of key flavour compounds in the industrial decaffeinating process. We have discovered a naturally decaffeinated Coffea arabica plant from Ethiopia, a species normally recognized for the high quality of its beans. It should be possible to transfer this trait to commercial varieties of arabica coffee plants by intraspecific hybridization — a process likely to be simpler than an interspecific hybridization strategy, which could require more than 30 years of breeding to fix the decaffeinated trait and would probably result in an inferior cup of coffee.