Development & Aid, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

SCIENCE-BRAZIL: Coffee Joins the Mapped Genome Club

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 22 2004 (IPS) - Brazil has added another trophy to its collection: the completed map of the coffee genome. The coffee bean was the driving force behind the Brazilian economy until the 1940s and the country is still the world’s leading producer and exporter of this commodity.

Two teams of scientists have finished drawing up the genetic map of the arabica coffee plant, deciphering 200,000 genetic sequences of DNA, announced research leaders this week.

Those sequences represent just two percent of the coffee genome, but will permit the identification of 30,000 to 35,000 genes, enough to provide a good idea of how this plant species evolved, Carlos Colombo, one of the project coordinators, told IPS.

To obtain representative data from the entire coffee tree, the scientists studied samples from all parts of the plant, from the root and stalk, to the leaves, he said.

The effort was divided between the two groups: one financed by FAPESP, the State of Sao Paulo Research Foundation, involving 20 laboratories under Colombo’s direction; and the other financed by the Genetic Resources Centre of EMPRAPA, the governmental agricultural research enterprise.

Now the two teams are exchanging information to bring together the known sequences, compare them and consolidate the identification of genes.

"What we are doing is establishing a database" of the genes, which should be ready by mid-year, and will allow Brazilian scientists to seek practical applications for this new knowledge, said Colombo.

It is possible that effective results, in the form of new coffee varieties that are more resistant to disease, cold or drought, for example, could emerge from the lab within five years, depending on the strategies the scientists adopt, he added.

For that to occur, it is necessary to discover the functions of the genes.

By interfering in a positive way in the productive process, scientists aim to improve the quality of the final product: the cup of coffee. The genome map could point the way to better taste and the means to altering caffeine levels.

Brazil’s priority is to improve production of arabica coffee, the leading variety in the Brazilian economy and the most widely consumed around the globe. That is why it is the focus of the genome study.

But arabica has "a narrow genetic base, without the resistance to disease" that the canephora variety has, or other wild species similar to arabica, said the scientist, explaining why he thinks the genetic investigations must continue.

Numerous groups, united in a scientific consortium, are participating in the coffee genome project. Under the contract agreed amongst those institutions, the database will only be open to those outside the group after two years, said Colombo.

The project’s price tag reaches six million reais, equivalent to 2.05 million dollars.

The Brazilian genome effort began to gather strength in 2000, when several science labs linked in a network – a novel working approach at the time – completed the genetic map of the Xylella fastidiosa, a disease-causing bacterium that afflicts orange trees.

Brazil has thus joined the elite in global genetic research with its strategy led by FAPESP: concentrating efforts in areas that are important to the country’s farm economy.

In addition to coffee and sugar, products in which Brazil is world leader in exports, scientists have studied the genome of the eucalyptus, the raw material for the paper and cellulose industry, also sold abroad in major quantities.

They have also focused on several microorganisms that are responsible for extensive crop damage, like the Xylella and the fungus that causes the disease known as "witch’s broom" (crinipellis perniciosa), which devastated cacao production in the northeastern state of Bahia in the 1990s.

Brazil also contributed a great deal to knowledge of human genes in the human cancer genome project, with identified one million gene sequences of tumours commonly found in this South American country.

Human diseases in poor, tropical countries are also receiving attention from genome scientists. Two years ago, laboratory networks identified 200 genes of the parasite that causes schistosomiasis.