Growers And Botanists Working To Improve Robusta Coffee, Which Will Likely Survive Warming Better Than Arabica

When the Paiter Suruí community expelled the last invaders of their land in 1981, they faced a divisive decision. Should they keep the coffee plantations left by the colonisers? Some destroyed them because of the death and violence contact with the non-Indigenous world had caused. Others felt sorry for the trees and couldn’t kill them. More than 40 years later, those estates that survived are being nurtured, supporting families and the environment. “Today, we use coffee as a way to preserve the forest,” says Celeste Paytxayeb Suruí, a famous Indigenous barista and coffee producer in Brazil. The award-winning fine coffee she prepares is called “Amazonian robusta”, and is produced in the Brazilian state of Rondônia in the western Amazon.

Nearly 140 Suruí families work in small coffee plantations on the Sete de Setembro Indigenous land. Abundant rain and constant hot temperatures has helped robusta coffee flourish there, with the climate resembling that of its native Congo basin. For a long time, robusta has had a reputation as a lower-grade, bitter coffee, often used in cheap blends alongside its “tastier” cousin, arabica. But researchers have been working to change that and prove that robusta, too, can be a finer brew.

Improving robusta’s quality is not only a matter of taste, but of climate adaptation. Because robusta thrives in higher temperatures than arabica, it will probably be critical to meet global demand. Robusta production has already increased from 28% of total coffee produced in the early 1990s to 44% in 2023. A recent report by Climate Central found that the climate crisis is affecting all the leading coffee producers, including Brazil, the world’s largest, which now experiences 70 more hot days a year. Though robusta is better adapted to higher temperatures, it is not completely immune from the climate crisis. It, too, is susceptible to rising temperatures, and depends on rainfall. When drought hit Rondônia in 2024, production in Celeste’s small coffee plantation inside the Suruí territory fell 40%. That year, coffee prices soared worldwide due to the extreme drought in Brazil and also in Vietnam, the world’s second largest producer.

Demand for coffee continues to rise, yet research shows that the global land suitable for growing coffee will decline by at least 50% by 2050 for arabica and robusta.So, experts and farmers worldwide are increasing efforts to innovate, breeding more resilient plants to adapt to extreme temperatures, drought and rainfall, and to resist more pests that thrive in warmer weather.

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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/18/a-robust-future-why-brazils-bitter-coffee-is-thriving-as-the-climate-crisis-hits-global-crops