Lost and Found: Coffea stenophylla and C. affinis , the Forgotten Coffee Crop Species of West Africa

Frontiers in Plant Science
Aaron P DavisJeremy Haggar

Abstract

Coffea arabica (Arabica) and C. canephora (robusta) almost entirely dominate global coffee production. Various challenges at the production (farm) level, including the increasing prevalence and severity of disease and pests and climate change, indicate that the coffee crop portfolio needs to be substantially diversified in order to ensure resilience and sustainability. In this study, we use a multidisciplinary approach (herbarium and literature review, fieldwork and DNA sequencing) to elucidate the identity, whereabouts, and potential attributes, of two poorly known coffee crop species: C. affinis and C. stenophylla. We show that despite widespread (albeit small-scale) use as a coffee crop species across Upper West Africa and further afield more than 100 years ago, these species are now extremely rare in the wild and are not being farmed. Fieldwork enabled us to rediscover C. stenophylla in Sierra Leone, which previously had not been recorded in the wild there since 1954. We confirm that C. stenophylla is an indigenous species in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Ivory Coast. Coffea affinis was discovered in the wild in Sierra Leone for the first time, having previously been found only in Guinea and Ivory Coast. Prior to our rediscover...Continue Reading

References

Aug 29, 2001·Bioinformatics·J P Huelsenbeck, F Ronquist
Aug 13, 2003·Bioinformatics·Fredrik Ronquist, John P Huelsenbeck
Sep 26, 2003·Nature·Fernando E VegaWanda Collins
Mar 23, 2004·Nucleic Acids Research·Robert C Edgar
Oct 11, 2005·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Mark W ChaseVincent Savolainen
Apr 10, 2008·Molecular Biology and Evolution·David Posada
Oct 1, 2004·American Journal of Botany·C Randal Linder, Loren H Rieseberg
Feb 13, 2019·Science Advances·Aaron P DavisEimear Nic Lughadha

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Datasets Mentioned

BETA
MT250043
MT274308
MT250045
MT274310
MT274313

Methods Mentioned

BETA
PCR
electrophoresis
genotyping

Software Mentioned

jModelTest
Google Earth
MUSCLE
GENEIOUS

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