Silvarolla Maria B, Mazzafera Paulo, Fazuoli Luiz C
Centro de Análise e Pesquisa Tecnológica do Agronegócio do Café Alcides Carvalho, IAC-APTA, CP 28, CEP 13001-970, Campinas, SP, Brasil.
Nature. 2004 Jun 24;429(6994):826. doi: 10.1038/429826a.
The adverse side effects of caffeine have increased the market for decaffeinated coffee to about 10% of coffee consumption worldwide (http://www.ncausa.org), despite the loss of key flavour compounds in the industrial decaffeinating process. We have discovered a naturally decaffeinated Coffea arabica plant from Ethiopia, a species normally recognized for the high quality of its beans. It should be possible to transfer this trait to commercial varieties of arabica coffee plants by intraspecific hybridization--a process likely to be simpler than an interspecific hybridization strategy, which could require more than 30 years of breeding to fix the decaffeinated trait and would probably result in an inferior cup of coffee.
尽管在工业脱咖啡因过程中会损失关键风味化合物，但咖啡因的不良副作用使全球脱咖啡因咖啡市场增长至咖啡消费总量的约10%（http://www.ncausa.org）。我们在埃塞俄比亚发现了一种天然脱咖啡因的阿拉比卡咖啡植株，该物种通常以其咖啡豆的高品质而闻名。通过种内杂交将这一特性转移到阿拉比卡咖啡植株的商业品种应该是可行的——这一过程可能比种间杂交策略更简单，种间杂交策略可能需要30多年的育种才能固定脱咖啡因特性，而且可能会导致咖啡品质较差。
