Not-for-profit organisation World Coffee Research (WCR) has announced the transition of its F1 hybrids to pre-commercial trials, as part of its F1 project.
The project, which began in 2015, has focused on the effects of climate change on high yielding varieties with the aim to develop first-generation (F1) hybrid coffee varieties to help improve productivity, disease tolerance, cup quality, and climate resilience.
“With this new cycle of evaluation, we are looking to learn more of how these hybrids perform in real-life environments in farmer fields and determine if any of them can add value for coffee production in the future,” says Senior Manager of WCR’s Nursery Program Emilia Umaña.
“Additionally, we want to better understand the system for incorporating new materials responsibly into the market—paving the way for many future releases.”
In 2022, the company announced the completion of its F1 hybrids phase one trials in which four finalist candidates were identified. These finalists were generated from crosses between high-performing Geisha and Sarchimor coffee plants and demonstrated good yields and cup quality.
In 2024, WCR plans to move these four hybrids into a pre-commercial trial phase to view the opportunities for uptake and adoption by key industry partners. The pre-commercial phase will treat materials at scale and is seen as a routine next step in variety development and release.
“These F1 hybrids represent a great near-term option for new varieties that we are very pleased to now be moving into pre-commercial testing,” says Dr Tania Humphrey, WCR Director of Research & Development.
“Rolling these out in a limited number of countries is allowing us to evaluate the varieties at a much larger scale and, importantly, it’s giving us an opportunity to test out new partnership models with the industry. The new material that will be coming out of our breeding programs in the years ahead will be even better and it will be important to have a multitude of public and private partnerships in the distribution network to ensure the varieties make their way out to farmers. Ultimately, WCR’s focus on varieties is about delivering choices – choices for farmers, for coffee producing countries, and for the industry that depends on them.”
As the F1 hybrid finalists advance to pre-commercial trials, the organisation is using new approaches in its breeding program to create varieties quickly that will be more accessible to farmers as they are seed propagated. The organisation aims to end this trial phase in 2030 and to work with the coffee community to develop plans for distribution models to provide farmers with these coffees by 2036.
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