Your morning coffee may be hundreds of thousands of years old
That coffee you slurped this morning? It’s 600,000 years old.
Using genes from coffee plants around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world’s most popular type of coffee, known to scientists as Coffea arabica and to coffee lovers simply as “arabica.”
The researchers, hoping to learn more about the plants to better protect them from pests and climate change, found that the species emerged around 600,000 years ago through natural crossbreeding of two other coffee species.
“In other words, prior to any intervention from man,” said Victor Albert, a biologist at the University at Buffalo who co-led the study.
These wild coffee plants originated in Ethiopia but are thought to have been first roasted and brewed primarily in Yemen starting in the 1400s. In the 1600s, Indian monk Baba Budan is fabled to have smuggled seven raw coffee beans back to his homeland from Yemen, laying the foundation for coffee’s global takeover.
Related articles
14 dead in road accident in India
(Xinhua) 14:13, January 03, 2024NEW DELHI, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- At least 14 people died and 27 others2024-06-03iQIYI signs strategic partnership with Tourism Authority of Thailand
iQIYI signed a strategic partnership letter of intent with the Tourism Authority of Thailand in Beij2024-06-03Nicole Kidman's kids she shares with ex
Nicole Kidman's hopes that her adopted children, son Connor, 29, and daughter Bella, 31, would atten2024-06-03Capitals' Alex Ovechkin has no points in an NHL playoff series for the 1st time
WASHINGTON (AP) — Alex Ovechkin in addition to being the second-most prolific goal-scorer in NHL his2024-06-03Iowa Supreme Court overturns $790,000 sexual harassment award to government employee
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Inappropriate comments by a superior to a social worker and between other em2024-06-03China's Einstein Probe astronomical satellite captures its first in
This photo shows a view captured by a Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) directed at the center of the2024-06-03
atest comment