Quote:
Originally Posted by alnorth
This report is ridiculous.
Presuming climate change happens, land which is currently unsuitable for these beans will suddenly become viable, and this crop is too valuable for the potential new growers to shrug their shoulders and say, "meh"
This bean wont be extinct unless the entire world becomes unsuitable, and since this is a warm weather crop, you'd need a new ice age for that, not global warming.
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As usual, the popular press completely misrepresented the study. The focus of the study was
wild Arabica coffee, not cultivated coffee. The irreplacable value of the wild coffee us it's genetic diversity, which provides potential for developing new strains of coffee that have improved flavor or stress resistant properties. For example if climate change rests in conditions generally less favorable to cultivate coffee, that disadvantage may be partially overcome by breeding strains tolerant of those stress conitions. However, in order to breed new strains, we need to have those traits already present in existing plants. That genetic diversity is largely contained in the wild populations.