Thanks to the most complete reconstruction of its chromosomes carried out so far, the genetic history of Arabica coffee, the species responsible for over 60% of global coffee production, has been reconstructed in great detail.
The result, published in the journal Nature Communications, comes from the international group led by the biotechnology company IGA Technology Services and the Institute of Applied Genomics of Udine, with the important contribution of the University of Udine, the University of Verona and the companies illycaffè of Trieste and Lavazza Group of Turin.
The information obtained could help develop new coffee varieties that are more resistant to disease or have different aromas.
Commercial coffee mainly comes from the mixture of two species: Coffea canephora, known as Robusta, and Coffea arabica.
“Compared to other cultivated forms of coffee, Arabica is a species whose genome was formed relatively recently in Africa from the union of two species: an ancestor of the current Robusta coffee and another closely related species, Coffea eugeniodes ", Gabriele Di Gaspero of the Institute of Applied Genomics, coordinator together with Michele Morgante of the study which sees Simone Scalabrin, Gabriele Magris and Mario Liva as the first signatories, tells ANSA.
“It therefore has 4 copies for each of the 11 chromosomes that make up its genome, instead of the 2 copies found in each of its progenitors”: this makes the interpretation and analysis of the data much more complex.
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