Cultivation of Coffea canephora

Robusta coffee also known as Coffea canephora contributes 30% of the world’s production. Coffea canephora is a diploid parent hybridized with Coffea eugenioides to produce Coffea arabica, an allotetraploid.

Coffea sp. is cultivated in large areas, using both conventional and organic management. Coffee requires a well distributed annual rainfall, a dry season not exceeding five months, and an annual temperature between 15 - 30° C. Coffea canephora can grow on different soil types. But for best root establishment and high yields, it requires a fertile, well aerated, free draining, slightly acidic, deep soil with reasonable humus content and a minimum depth of 1-1.5m in well moist and 3m in drier areas. Robusta does not tolerate water logging or ‘wet feet’.

Coffea canephora can endure unfavorable conditions, especially exposure to the sun and extremely high temperatures. Also, it is much more resistant to diseases and pests. Coffea canephora coffees requires the optimum annual mean temperature ranges from 22 to 30º C. Hence, the crop is better adapted to higher temperatures than Arabica coffee.

Optimum rainfall can provide and meet the water needs of plants. Water is needed by plants to carry out various processes, such as the formation and filling of organ cells, regulating cell turgidity to run the mechanism of organ movement (opening and closing stomata), solvents of solids, reactants in the process of photosynthesis, and temperature control of all plant organs.

Coffea canephora requires a rainfall range of 1,200 mm to 1,800 mm, which is well distributed over a period of 9 months. Both the total amount and the distribution pattern are important.
Cultivation of Coffea canephora

African coffee - Coffea canephora

Coffee originates in Ethiopia, with commercial production dating back a thousand years. The crop spread across the Red Sea to Yemen and eventually to other parts of the world.

African coffees canephora, have a neutral taste. Coffea canephora is better known today as Coffea robusta which is classified as a variety of C. canephora.

In humid tropical areas especially in Africa and Asia where arabica varieties do not thrive well, robusta coffee is cultivated successfully. Coffea canephora is indigenous to tropical West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guineas, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo), eastwards to Uganda and north to south Cameroon to Northern Angola.

C. canephora originated in the equatorial lowland forest of Africa. It was not identified until the 1890s, when it was taken to Belgium and from there to Asia it has subsequently been re-introduced into Africa where it is now the principle species grown.
African coffee - Coffea canephora