COFFEE TREE

The coffee plant or Cafeto* is a bush(american) or a shrub(english), which can reach up to 10 meters in height if left in the wild, however, in plantations they are pruned to 2 meters to facilitate the collection of cherries .

*(A coffee plantation is a piece of land with a population of coffee trees)

In fact, the coffee tree is one of the most important plant products on the global market.

The story of the surgeon Jose Vilardebo places the discovery of coffee in the year 1258. We invite you to read the following article: https://coffeetank.net/la-historia-del-cafe/

Genres or Varietal of Coffee

The coffee family tree comprises approximately 500 genera and more than 6,000 species. One of the genera is Coffea, which has 10 species cultivated by man and from which all the coffee we consume comes. But from the agricultural and commercial point of view, there are only three that stand out: coffea arabica, coffea canephora (robusta) and coffea liberica.

In any case, the two most cultivated species are arabica and robusta. The first represents approximately 80% of world production, the coffea robusta 20%, while the liberica only 1%.

The Arabica variety coffee tree has specific characteristics that differentiate it from the Robusta variety. The main one is the mode of fertilization. The arabica coffee tree can self-fertilize, whereas the robusta coffee tree needs insect pollination.

Another difference is found inside the coffee fruit. In the robust variety tree, the sap contains three or four times more caffeine than in the arabica variety, which is used to defend itself against pests, diseases or stress due to lack of water.

This makes the Arabica variety more delicate to grow, but at the same time it is also considered to be of higher quality, since the high concentration of caffeine in the Robusta variety gives it a much more bitter aftertaste.

EL CAFETO

The coffee tree is one of the few plants that flowers and bears fruit at the same time. The rains influence the ripening of the fruit, so not all the fruits of the coffee tree ripen at the same time, thus the bush simultaneously contains ripe fruits, green fruits and flowers. But the most significant characteristic of the coffee cherry is that it has two opposite seeds inside, which gives the coffee bean its most spectacular and unique shape: facing each other, one side of the seed is flat and the other convex. Depending on the species, the seed has different shapes. For example, the fruit of the coffee tree

robusta is more oval and has a straight center line. On the other hand, the arabica seed is more elongated and fine, with an “S” shaped line.

One (there are several) of the characteristics that make the coffee tree unique and precisely the Arabica species that finally represents 80% of the world coffee production, compared to other plants, is that it generally grows at altitudes between 900 and 2100 above sea level. sea, in the geographical area known as the “Coffee Belt” located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Although there are more than 35 coffee-producing countries within this strip, the ones that stand out for their volume are:

Colombia, Brazil, Vietnam, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, India, Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica, El Salvador.

The coffee tree was not cultivated until the fifteenth century, described by the German botanist Leonard Rauwolf in 1583 for the first time.

The coffee tree hides countless curiosities about its history, its cultivation or its morphology that we still do not know despite being one of the most important plant products worldwide.
It has come a long way from its discovery in central Ethiopia to the present day, when its roasted and ground fruit has become the second most consumed drink in the world after water.

We invite you to read about coffee varietals.