Please forgive me if this has already been posted (I did search the forums before posting). To me this is an interesting effort as my wife only drinks decaf and I don't drink regular coffee in the evenings (yet, as my coffee habit is evolving partly due to frequenting this terrific site). Of course, the coffee company's primary reason for trying to make this happen is the potential for greater profit ("If you have lower-caffeine content with higher pleasure, you might be able to repeat your little luxury several times a day," Mr. Illy says.) As a capitalist, I don't have any problem with that, and the market will appropriately reward or punish the effort. I would expect to see advertising extolling the virtues of 'healthier, low-caffeine coffee' trying to jump on the 'healthy lifestyle' bandwagon. It will be fun to watch, but I don't plan on spending $300/lb!


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122669958787129493.html

Juliet Chung wrote:From Madagascar to Costa Rica, farmers, scientists and multinational companies have been racing to deliver an elusive product -- a gourmet coffee bean that's naturally low in caffeine.

Coffee companies have been spending millions of dollars identifying, breeding and, in some cases, genetically manipulating promising coffee varietals. They've rooted through seed banks, assembled teams of agronomists and tasted countless cups of coffee, all in pursuit of what some people call the industry's holy grail, a bean that produces a great-tasting cup of "low-caf."

(cont'd)

As a geneticist though one who works with mammals and not plants I still have a few thoughts on this topic. I have only skimmed the article so far but I don't see why modified beans should be much more expensive and I don't understand why they can't make them 100% decafe by knocking out a critical enzyme in the pathway. Seems like they have a ways to go to understand the process fully.

I view the current state of decaffeination as a "transient process". You pick out an appropriate or desired crop of beans and put it through a chemical treatment that removes much but not all of the caffeine and in addition causes other somewhat undefined changes to the beans. The end result must be repeated with each crop or bean choice and the end result will vary somewhat too. The good side of this is that you can decaffeinate any bean you desire from any crop. The bad side is that it is not 100% efficient and the process alters the end taste to the point where some of us don't go near decafe beans.

Through genetics either using recombinant DNA technology or via traditional genetic crosses one can select for (I presume not being a plant expert) mutants or knockouts of genes that are part of the pathway that makes caffeine. This process is stable rather then "transient" as described above. You can get the same beans crop after crop and year to year. Recombinant techniques are to me more desirable since they maintain virtually "congenic" or identical overall genetic backgrounds with the coffee strain you choose to make decaffeinated. That would lead to virtually identical tastes given the beans are planted in soils and altitudes where the "terroir" allows this to take place. I can't address any cross pollination or strain contamination problems but they would not be any different then any other coffee plant cross contamination taking place "naturally." The downside of this protocol is that you have only the very limited number of strains that are modified as opposed to a chemical process that can be used on any beans. I don't know if the coffee genome has been sequenced or if the caffeine biosynthetic pathway is fully deciphered. I guess I have some homework to do.

The bottom line to my thoughts is that a genetic approach COULD in theory allow the highest quality beans to be decaffeinated in a stable fashion while maintaining the quality of the coffee. Who among us would not like 20 great shots in a row

GMO crops tend to elicit everything from suspicion to outright paranoia, especially in Europe. Also, coffee pollen is wind carried, so farmers tend to be worried about what is being planted upwind of them. So the people doing non-caf coffee are following conventional breeding techniques.

These are also suspect in my book. Right now, the best tasting coffees are coming from old, genetically diverse cultivars -- Ethiopian coffees, old growth SL28s, Bourbons, and Typicas in the rest of East Africa and Central America, or from accidental hybrids like Pacamaras. The highly selected strains may have better yields and resistance, but even the best ones, like Caturas, are one dimensional in taste and rarely win prizes or score of 90. Caturra is the overwhelming specialty coffee variety in Central America; but all the auction money goes to far less common Bourbons, Pacamaras, and Geishas, since Caturras mostly taste clean, snappy, and completely and boringly cookie cutter.

I'm not arguing against science in high end coffees; I'm just pointing out that the priorities for any top tier food is radically different from the quality control, precision, and perfectly canned experience Andrea Illy is droning on about (he really doesn't seem to be a chip off the old block). Fine foods require lots of unique qualities rather than uniform quality control. This change of emphasis makes the excessive genetic uniformity produced by modern breeding methods a poor marketing strategy. If the new non-caf coffees turn out to be cookie cutter in taste, nobody is going to pay more than cookie cutter prices once their novelty wears off. The people willing to spend $50 or more a pound for coffee will not buy them more than once.

Thanks for that Jim

I don't understand the hysteria regarding genetically modified food products but I have no stake one way or the other besides thinking that feeding the growing population on the planet should be a priority.

With regard to coffee and pollination I would assume then that there is a constant cross-pollination "problem" with common strains inter-breeding and messing with the more prized varieties. Why no complaining about this natural process?

I understand from the wine industry that older vines as you describe can be used to then splice on newer shoots that make the fruit/grape. I know its very labor intensive and therefore likely expensive but can this chimera production be done with coffee?

You have described a complicated problem with no easy solutions. I certainly don't have any great ideas to bring to the table. However, all these new possibilities are pretty exciting to me anyway.

GC7 wrote:I don't understand the hysteria regarding genetically modified food products but I have no stake one way or the other besides thinking that feeding the growing population on the planet should be a priority.

I don't understand it either; mostly ignorance I guess, plus the disappearance of good will towards new Promethian technologies stemming from the failed promises of atomic energy and assorted environmental crises.

It's a pity. The problem of disappearing genetic diversity in agricultural strains, that has geneticists as worried as gourmets, can be solved with gene splicing. Instead of breeding ultra-uniform strains with the desirable traits, new alleles for these traits can be introduced into a much more diverse gene pools.

This could be a nice one for a poll. "Would you buy genetically modified, low-caffeine coffee". Count me in as a "Yes!".

another_jim wrote:It's a pity. The problem of disappearing genetic diversity in agricultural strains, that has geneticists as worried as gourmets, can be solved with gene splicing. Instead of breeding ultra-uniform strains with the desirable traits, new alleles for these traits can be introduced into a much more diverse gene pools.

Well said Jim - You have hit on a real dilemma where disappearing diversity by over use of a few strains that may not be capable in the long run of sustaining itself in all environmental niches could cause the loss of a few billion years of natural selection. The answer is as you say but only along with a sustained and concerted effort to maintain every possible strain in storage or otherwise before they go extinct. In the future if we don't implode and also turn our back on science and technology as we have done somewhat in the last decade we will be able to mix and match traits at will but only if those genes have been saved and stored away. It's a VERY important effort.

Elbasso wrote:This could be a nice one for a poll. "Would you buy genetically modified, low-caffeine coffee". Count me in as a "Yes!".

I think you could modify your poll to say -"Would you buy low or no caffeine Panama Geisha COE winner or Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley no cafeine or insert your very favorite coffee here? Those are or will be possible through genetic techniques.

GC7 wrote:I think you could modify your poll to say -"Would you buy low or no caffeine Panama Geisha COE winner or Ethiopia Idido Misty Valley no cafeine or insert your very favorite coffee here? Those are or will be possible through genetic techniques.

Maybe, maybe not. I just want to point out that there's likely to be a reason that the plants evolved caffeine, probably having to do with pest resistance. It's certainly possible that if you knocked out the gene that coded for caffeine, you'd have to use very high levels of pesticide or have other agricultural consequences.

Best,
David

GC7 wrote: Who among us would not like 20 great shots in a row

I'm inclined to agree with you seeing as how too much caffeine turns me into a wigged out mess, but just to play devil's advocate, does caffeine make good coffee all the better by increasing its scarcity at any given moment? In other words, if you could drink 20 cups of the stuff, would you like it as much? More isn't always better.