To read parts 1 through 9 of The Long Road to Quality © please click here.

Crosses and hybrids
Catuai (Ka-too-ah-ee) was created in Brazil in 1949 by crossing Mundo Novo with Caturra. It is a semi-dwarf that is highly productive and capable of yielding very good quality coffee. The yellow Catuai is especially prized. Both Daterra Farm in Brazil and El Injerto in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, grow Yellow Catuai among other cultivars.

Mundo Novo is a cross developed in Brazil in the 1940's of Bourbon with the Sumatra Typica. It has spread throughout the Americas but is most popular today in Brazil. It has very vigorous growth, is high yielding and can produce very good quality.

A third cross of considerable importance is Pacamara, which first appeared in the late 1950's. The mutant dwarf cultivar Pacas was cross-bred with Maragogipe in El Salvador to produce a more compact, vigorous producer of large leaves, fruit and seeds. The Pacamara has attracted considerable attention of the specialty coffee world in the last few years, garnering first place in the El Salvador Cup of Excellence last year (La Montaña), and this year, in the Guatemala Cup of Excellence (El Injerto). It has a distinct citrus flavor profile.

The globalization and intensification of agriculture has led to the search for coffee hybrids which are pest resistant. Several of these have entered the coffee market since their introduction in the 1950's. The S795 was a precursor; it was developed in the 1920's in India by crossing the Liberica species (a poor tasting coffee species of no current commercial value) coffee with Arabica. It is still grown in Southern India with various Arabica cultivars and on the island of Sumatra where it grows alongside the Typica Bergendal. Its structure is that of an Arabica.

A very disease resistant natural Arabica x Robusta cross appeared in East Timor in the 1940's and was called the Hibrido de Timor. It has spread throughout the island since the mid 1950's. This hybrid was used to develop the Catimor hybrid in Brazil, a cross between the Hibrido and Caturra (Sarchimor was a similar cross), the latter cultivar being used to develop high yield and compact growth. This became popular in Costa Rica and other parts of Latin America but is now being steadily replaced with more traditional varieties or newer hybrids due to its poor cup quality.

Catimor was in turn used for creating the disease resistant hybrids Ruiru 11 in Kenya and the Variedad de Colombia (photo) in Colombia during the 1970's. Both these hybrid Arabicas are very heavy fruit producers requiring many agricultural inputs and are universally suspect, quality-wise, in the specialty coffee world. Large growers have planted these new varieties in blocks, separating them from other cultivars, thus having control to respond to feedback from the marketplace and to observation of long-term environmental adaptation of these newcomers. Not so for many smallholders! They often replace plants one at a time as old ones die, resulting in a chaotic smorgasbord. Nevertheless, new hybrid generations involving much back-crossing with quality Arabica cultivars are being developed with quality given more weight in the search for resistance. The newest offspring from Variedad de Colombia is called Castillo. We shall see...

Finally, Brazil has come up with its own artificially created Robusta x Arabica hybrid, called Icatu (not genetically modified). One line of this plant is said to show particular quality promise.

New Varieties of Arabica
Now that a part of the specialty coffee world is focusing with real interest on fine single origin coffees, naming the variety of coffee has become quite important, as it is in wine. There is no doubt that the variety of coffee used is critical to the makeup of that coffee's flavor profile. Most of the varieties, cultivars and hybrids presented here have only begun to emerge and more time will be required to properly grasp the range and potentials of many of them. We have just started to taste exemplary fine crafted coffees! There is no greater proof that variety matters than the last Arabica we will present here: Gesha or Geisha. Here is a plant that was plucked out of the wilds of Ethiopia in the early twentieth century and which, after some meandering, found its way to Central America by the mid 1950's as a coffee tree with promising resistance to certain blights. Its yield was very disappointing and soon Gesha became a neglected castaway. Then came the Panama coffee competition of 2004. Hacienda La Esmeralda, responding to the growing search for ever-finer coffees, presented a small lot of a unique, single varietal coffee from their farm. Their strictly Gesha variety coffee took the international jury by storm. Here were flavors the jurors never imagined existed in the Americas! Is this a variety, a cultivar? I have no idea. To read more about Gesha click here. It is being planted all over the Americas right now, the results of which we should be seeing in another three to four years. Will we see other exotic Arabicas step over the oceans? Care has to be taken not to export new blights carried in the seeds themselves along with the riches we enjoy as consumers.

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