TOKYO – Japanese, Tokyo based coffee company Key Coffee is joining the global, non-profit R&D program of U.S.-based World Coffee Research (WCR) to develop higher-quality cultivars of coffee plants.
Within the year, the Japanese company’s directly operated coffee plantation in the Toraja highlands of Sulawesi, Indonesia, and three other cooperating coffee plantations there will begin cultivation experiments with WCR, working to discover new species and to cross-breed for improved strains.
Key Coffee will seek to develop an improved cultivar of Arabica that produces beans of the same high standard as the plants grown for its accredited Toarco Toraja brand, but with higher yields and better resistance to pathogens and climate variations.
Coffee plant cultivars with these characteristics are deemed essential if coffee shortages are to be avoided in the future as more people worldwide take up the coffee-drinking habit.
