Coffea canephora, which produces the popular robusta beans, is the second most important variety of the coffee plant.
Like its arabica cousin, C. canephora can grow tall; if left to its own device, it can attain a majestic thirty feet in height.
But like the Arabica plant, it is kept to about eight feet in height to allow for harvesting.In other ways, too, the robusta plant resembles the arabica plant.
C. canephora doesn’t deliver a crop until three to five years after it is planted, after which the fruits take almost a year to mature. And the plant can continue to bear cherries for twenty to thirty years.
Like C. arabica and C. canephora appreciates sixty inches of rain per year. However, this plant likes it considerably hotter than its arabica cousin, and also tolerates higher humidity.
Grown mainly in West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia and parts of South America, robusta plants do best in equatorial conditions with temperatures ranging from the mid- seventies to the mid eighties, and altitudes ranging from sea level to 3,000 feet.
They also differ in that they are both more resistant to disease and higher yielding than robusta plants. The typical robusta tree yields as much as two to three pounds of beans per year – about twice the amount produced by an arabica plant.
Moreover, at 2 percent caffeine by weight, the caffeine content of robusta coffee is higher than that of arabica.
Robusta beans are considered inferior to arabica because they are far less flavorful, with a distinct bitterness.
This is why robusta beans are less expensive than arabica beans and are often used in lower grade commercial coffee blends, as well as in the processing of many instant coffees, both flavored and unflavored.
Coffea Canephora
