Arabica Coffee Could Become Extinct Due To Climate Changes

A new study has found that due to the climatic changes which have resulted from increase in global temperatures, the wild Arabica coffee may become extinct by 2080.

A study by researchers at Britain's Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in collaboration with scientists in Ethiopia found that the wild Arabica coffee is in danger of becoming extinct by 2080 owing to the drastic climatic changes being experienced worldwide.

While scientists state that cultivators could still grow this kind of coffee under specially designed and controlled conditions, its wild form which is said to have greater genetic diversity faces the threat of extinction. According to the researchers, 38 to 99.7 percent of the land suitable for cultivating the wild Arabic will cease to exist by 2080. Coffee in general is highly sensitive to temperature and even a few degrees of temperature going up or down could affect its cultivation immensely which in turn will affect both its production and the livelihood of people who are employed in this business.

"Arabica can only exist in a very specific pace with a very specific number of other variables," Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, said. "It is mainly temperature but also the relationship between temperature and seasonality - the average temperature during the wet season for example.

"The extinction of Arabica coffee is a startling and worrying prospect."

The report which was published in the Public Library of Science journal PLOS ONE, showed a "profoundly negative influence on the number and extent of wild Arabica populations, the researchers said."

Two types of analysis was conducted - the locality analysis and the area analysis. In the locality analysis and found the best outcome would be a degradation of 65 percent of the land by 2080 and the worst would be a degradation of 99.7 percent of the land by 2080. In the area analysis, it was found that the best result would be that there would be a 30 percent loss of suitable growing land for Arabic coffee and the worst would be the loss of 90 percent of suitable land.

"The models assume intact natural vegetation, whereas the highland forests of Ethiopia and South Sudan are highly fragmented due to deforestation," the researchers wrote. "Other factors, such as pests and diseases, changes in flowering times, and perhaps a reduction in the number of birds (which disperse the coffee seeds), are not included, and these are likely to have a compounding negative influence."