Coffee biotechnology

Coffee, a perennial tree crop, is difficult to improve through breeding. Varietal improvement programs have focused on improving overall yield through increasing plant vigor and disease resistance. Genes may be introgressed from wide crosses, but such efforts are often hindered by sexual barriers. In addition, such efforts require many cycles of selfing and backcrossing to eliminate deleterious genes and gene combinations. Recent advances in cellular, developmental and molecular genetics, when combined with conventional breeding, can target and achieve improvements in specific agronomic, processing, and consumer qualities. Somatic embryos, which can be regenerated into intact coffee plants, can be induced from a variety of tissues. Coffee embryogenic cell suspensions have been developed for in vitro selection and rapid clonal propagation. These developments permit further coffee improvement through genetic engineering. DNA probes may also be used to track desirable genes or gene combinations to assist plant breeding. Integration of these technologies will also reduce the development time for varietal improvement. Future advances in plantation management and post-harvest processing will be matched by improvements in the coffee plant