SCIENCE: Your morning coffee may be more than a half million years old

As long as it's not on the burner for this long.... Coffee plants may be up to 600,000 years old! Here's the story.

(Photo: Our classic Dunkin coffee costume on Dolly, and Dunkin' Donut costume on Franklin from 10 years ago. We miss our Dolly and Franklin! Credit: R.G.) 

SCIENCE: Your morning coffee may be more than a half million years old 

BY ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN, AP, April 15, 2024

That coffee you slurped this morning? It’s 600,000 years old.

Using genes from coffee plants around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world’s most popular type of coffee, known to scientists as Coffea arabica and to coffee lovers simply as “arabica.”

The researchers, hoping to learn more about the plants to better protect them from pests and climate change, found that the species emerged around 600,000 years ago through natural crossbreeding of two other coffee species.

“In other words, prior to any intervention from man,” said Victor Albert, a biologist at the University at Buffalo who co-led the study.

These wild coffee plants originated in Ethiopia but are thought to have been first roasted and brewed primarily in Yemen starting in the 1400s. 

In the 1600s, Indian monk Baba Budan is fabled to have smuggled seven raw coffee beans back to his homeland from Yemen, laying the foundation for coffee’s global takeover.

Arabica coffee, prized for its smooth and relatively sweet flavor, now makes up 60% - 70% of the global coffee market and is brewed by brands such as Starbucks, Tim Horton’s and Dunkin’. 

The rest is robusta, a stronger and more bitter coffee made from one of arabica’s parents, Coffea canephora.