Lecture Description

It’s easy to take for granted that every single cup of coffee we drink was created as a result of breeding that happened yesterday. It follows that to secure the future of coffee in the face of the climate crisis, breeding better trees is essential for both adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change—and delivering higher quality in the cup. But, globally, coffee breeding programs are in danger of being overtaken by events, unable to generate innovations quickly enough to respond to the growing climate crisis.

Despite this urgent situation, the outlook in coffee is promising—because the industry has come together to take concrete, pragmatic global action to respond to the enormity of the climate crisis with modern agricultural science. In 2022, World Coffee Research launched the Innovea Global Coffee Breeding Network, an industry-funded and -driven program that brings multiple countries together to collaborate, for the first time in history, to develop and release better coffee varieties tailored to the unique needs of each countries’ farmers and markets, and the realities of a warming planet. The outputs of this program will shape the future of coffee agriculture for decades to come.

In this panel, WCR will share its perspectives on the future of breeding and coffee agriculture, and why collaboration has become the new imperative.

Date: Thursday, June 22, 2023
Time: 15:30pm - 16:30pm EET

Location: Lecture Room 2

Presenter:

Emilia Umaña Acosta
Nursery Program Manager, World Coffee Research

Emilia is an agronomist and leads the Seed and Nursery Program at WCR and is insterested in all activities related to renovation progrmas, seed systems, propagation methods. The program includes different activities related to making sure that better plants are available and accesible to growers.