By Adithi Ramakrishnan, Associated PressArabica coffee beans at a plantation in Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala. Researchers estimate that arabica came to be from natural crossbreeding of two other coffee species over 600,000 years ago. 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.
“In other words, prior to any intervention from man,” said Victor Albert, a biologist at the University at Buffalo who co-led the study. 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, Dunkin’ and Tim Hortons. The rest is robusta, a stronger and more bitter coffee made from one of arabica’s parents, Coffea canephora.
The arabica plant’s population fluctuated over thousands of years before humans began cultivating it, flourishing during warm, wet periods and suffering through dry ones. These lean times created so-called population bottlenecks, when only a small number of genetically similar plants survived.