How did Yunnan become the coffee capital of China? It all started with a "lost book"...

When it comes to coffee production areas, you may think of African coffee plantations or tropical industrial parks in Central and South America. But what many people don’t know is that Yunnan also produces coffee and is the coffee capital of China.

According to the "2022 Yunnan Coffee Industry Development Report" released by the Yunnan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Yunnan's coffee planting area is 1.2734 million mu, accounting for 98.4% of the country's planting area, and its output ranks 14th in the world. Excluding the 44,000 tons of coffee beans exported, the remaining production consumed domestically accounts for nearly 40% of the total consumption of coffee beans. The "Yunnan content" of the coffee we drink is definitely considerable. It can be said that 4 out of every 10 coffee beans on the domestic market come from Yunnan.

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You may be surprised that Yunnan has not been a coffee producing area in history. So when did it start producing coffee?

Yunnan coffee as a dowry

Yunnan coffee now supports the Chinese coffee market. Who would have thought that it was first introduced because of this small red fruit that looks festive.

Coffee berries | Photo courtesy of the author

There are many theories about the earliest introduction of coffee in Yunnan. According to records kept by the Ministry of Agriculture’s Ruili Coffee Germplasm Resource Garden, the largest coffee seedling gene bank in my country, Yunnan coffee was first introduced in 1893, and the seeds were obtained from border areas and were said to have come from dowries.

Descendants of the coffee tree introduced in 1893 | Photo provided by the author

At that time, coffee was introduced as an ornamental plant, not an economic crop. The locals did not know that the kernel of this red fruit, after being roasted, could emit a charming aroma and had been popular in most of the world for many, many years.

Why has Yunnan never introduced coffee and developed a large-scale coffee industry in its long history? This has to be mentioned as a devil that the coffee industry is afraid of.

Coffee Devil - Coffee Rust

If you want to grow coffee on a large scale in Yunnan, you must face a demon that has been lingering for a hundred years - coffee rust. There are 50 species of coffee rust fungi in various producing areas around the world, and Yunnan has 14 species.

If coffee farmers cannot fight against rust, they will face crop failure and lose all their money.

Leaves infected by coffee rust | Photo provided by the author

In 1868, coffee rust became prevalent in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). In less than 10 years, the coffee growing area in Ceylon had shrunk by 80%. Currently, almost all coffee producing areas are affected by rust, causing economic losses of US$1 billion to US$2 billion and a 20% to 25% loss in production each year.

Rust is actually a disease caused by fungi. Rust-like yellow spots will appear on the back of infected coffee leaves, and then a large number of leaves will fall, endangering the life of the plant. In fact, this is the process in which the hyphae penetrate into the cells, come out from the stomata, and then grow a large number of spores to infect other leaves.

I lost a book and got a coffee forest.

Until the second half of the last century, my country had no particularly ideal method to deal with coffee rust.

Once, Mr. Yu Hao from the Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, was returning to Hainan from Yunnan. He was a book lover and borrowed a book on coffee breeding from the library. As luck would have it, his bag and book were stolen on the bus.

Books in the library must be returned, and this was a rare copy, so what would happen if it was lost? Teacher Yu Hao had no choice but to bite the bullet and contact the author of the book to see if he could buy another copy and return it to the library.

The author of this book is from the Portuguese Rust Research Center, a top institution in the world for rust research. When they heard that China was also growing coffee, they were very excited and curious, so they sent us the seeds of the rust-resistant variety Catim 7963 that they were cultivating at the time.

The fate of this book has led to the cooperation between Chinese and Portuguese scientists on the research of coffee germplasm to this day.

China introduced 102 seeds of Catim 7963 from the Portuguese Rust Research Center for sowing and seedling raising in 1988, promoted the Catim variety on a large scale in 1999, and later the planting area exceeded 1 million mu. To this day, the Catim series of varieties are still the main varieties planted in Yunnan.

In April 1998, Dr. Carlos, a coffee rust expert from the International Coffee Rust Research Center (CIFC) in Portugal, gave guidance at the coffee germplasm nursery (Ruili, Yunnan). 丨Photo provided by the author One year in Mangshi, Dehong, Director Bai of the Yunnan Dehong Tropical Science Research Institute told students after giving a class: "Without Catimu, there would be no Yunnan coffee industry today. This variety has brought about the great development of Yunnan coffee for 30 years."

The endless war against rust

With the development of the times, Yunnan coffee breeding technology is becoming more and more advanced.

In the past, the expansion of germplasm resources has always been a difficult problem in germplasm research. Germplasm preservation requires complete genetic consistency and asexual reproduction. Traditional methods of expansion include grafting and cuttings.

The grafted plant shape is still different from the mother plant; each small flower pot for cuttings needs an independent environment, and even with a lot of experienced workers, only 30% to 40% survival rate can be guaranteed. These seedlings have to be transplanted to the field, and the survival rate is even lower. These traditional methods of breeding coffee are too slow.

Tissue culture is to completely clone the characteristics of the mother plant. It is very mature abroad. We have discussed with them whether we can introduce the technology, but it is too expensive and we cannot afford it. We can only research and develop it ourselves.

Thanks to the efforts of our scientific researchers, we have successfully mastered the tissue culture technology of coffee, shortening the time for cultivating a variety from 30 years to 15 years. This has greatly improved the efficiency of coffee breeding and enabled us to cultivate better coffee varieties faster.

Tissue culture | Photo provided by the author

But it’s not just human technology that’s changing, coffee rust is also evolving. Catim, which was once thought to help humans defeat rust, has gradually lost its resistance to the ever-changing rust fungus.

In order to cultivate the next generation of rust-resistant varieties, we introduced 22 strains of Sarchimor from Portugal to Yunnan. After planting them locally, we took the seeds to Portugal for seedling cultivation.

The Portuguese Rust Research Center has specially provided a greenhouse for the Sachim bred in Yunnan, and then collected rust inoculum from different sources around the world to test disease resistance.

The latest rust-resistant variety currently being promoted in Yunnan is the best of the best, Sachim. In resistance tests, it can resist known Yunnan rust species, and has a more excellent flavor, easier tree shape, and larger grains.

The glory of Yunnan small-grain coffee may be taken over by this variety in the near future.

Photo courtesy of the author

Coffee, a drink that is often associated with bright office buildings or comfortable afternoon tea, is actually the result of generations of people’s scientific research and labor in laboratories and fields.

The greatness of breeding lies in the long cycle. It takes three years for a coffee tree to bear fruit, and after that it needs to be constantly screened and cultivated. In order to cultivate a variety, it takes a generation or even multiple generations.

Since the founding of New China, after decades of hard work, two or three generations of agricultural scientists have brought about earth-shaking changes in coffee germplasm research.

By the end of 2023, the coffee germplasm resource sub-bank of the National Tropical Plant Germplasm Resource Bank of my country will have preserved 801 coffee germplasms, including 6 species. The resource types cover 100% of my country's coffee germplasm resources, and the largest coffee germplasm resource bank in China has been built.

Photo courtesy of the author

Rich germplasm banks are the cradle of new variety breeding. We can believe that in the future, more and more excellent coffee varieties will appear in my country, bringing us a richer drinking experience.

But whether it is Catim or Sachim, what really drives the development of Yunnan coffee is not a certain variety, but the silent efforts of generations of agricultural science workers.

Author: 8bit, founder of Beijing 8bit Coffee, popular science creator

Reviewer: Bai Xuehui, Associate Researcher and Deputy Director, Dehong Institute of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, Yunnan Province