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When only one bean develops from a cherry it is called a peaberry. Each tree can produce between 1 and 12 pounds of coffee a year, depending on soil, climate and many other factors. At high altitudes the plants generally blossom once, while in the lower-lying areas where there are no great seasonal changes the plants blossom several times a year - so that there are almost always fruits on the plants. A hybrid of arabica, Maragogype - called the elephant bean because of its large size - originated from the Maragogype County in the Bahia state of Brazil. Today it is grown in Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil and Zaire. Coffee canephora (var. Robusta): Coffea canephora provides the robusta beans. Robusta, which can grow up to 32 feet in height as a shrub or tree, has a shallow root system. The fruits are round and take nearly a year to mature. The seeds are rounder and smaller than arabica beans. Robusta coffee was discovered in the Congo in 1898 and has become widespread since the n - representing about 1/4 of the world's coffee production. It is grown in West and Central Africa, throughout Southeast Asia, and parts of South America including Brazil, where it is known as Conilon. Robusta trees produce their first crop 3 to 4 years after planting and they remain fruitful for 20 to 30 years. The trees prefer equatorial conditions with tempratures between 75 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit and an annual rainfall of 60 inches. Robusta tends to be a hardier, more disease-resistant bean than Arabica which is less expensive to maintain and produces a higher yield. Consequently Robustas are used for the less expensive canned and instant coffees. Arabica coffee grows best at high altitudes (from 1500m to 2500m) while Robusta coffee prospers in lowlands such as rainforests. Before roasting, the colour of robusta beans are yellow to light brown in appearance whereas arabica are green with silver/blueish shades. Some differences between Arabica and Robusta: Arabica Robusta Date Described 1753 1895 Chromosomes 44 22 Time from flower to ripe cherry 9 months 10-11 months Flowering after rain irregular Ripe cherries fall stay Yield (kg beans/ha) 1500-3000 2300-4000 Root system deep shallow Optimum temperature (yearly avg) 15-34 deg C 24-30 deg C Optimal rainfall 1500-2000mm 2000-3000mm Optimum growth height 1000-2000m 0-700m Caffeine content of beans avg 1.2% avg 2.0% Shape of beans flat oval When ready to be harvested, the fruit on the coffee tree turns a dark cherry colour - this is usually about 8 to 9 months after flowering has taken place. The time of harvest obviously varies according to the position in the world but usually there is only one harvest per year. North of the equator, the harvest takes place between September and March. South of the equator, the harvest usually takes place in April and May. Sometimes, however, it lasts until August. In some countries where the division between the wet and dry seasons is not clear (eg Kenya and Colombia) there may be two flowerings a year. In w hich case a main and secondary crop often occurs. Countries on the equator are able to harvest fruit all year round. Ripe fruits can be plucked by hand, or picked with small rakes, or else brought down to earth with poles: the first two systems are used where low-cost labour is available, and they are more selective; the pole system is quicker, but less careful; and calls for further operations of berry-cleaning. Where the terrain allows it, harvesting can today be effected with special automatic machines - a single machine can do the work of 100 men, gathering 95% of the fruit in one go. Using a machine is cheaper but means that the ripe cherries are not picked out from the others - if there are any green cherries mixed in with the others then the coffee will taste more bitter; if there are any over-ripe cherries then the final product is likely to have an unpleasant, acrid taste. The machine uses a series of multiple vibrating rods which, when introduced into the canopy by a special moving machines, causes the ripe berries to fall. Most coffee, however, is picked by hand by either selective or strip picking. Selective picking involves the pickers making several passes among the coffee trees at intervals of about 10 days to ensure that only the fully ripe beans are taken. These seedlings were entrusted by the King to the botanists of the King's Royal Botanical Garden (now the "Jardin des Plantes"). It is the descendents of this plant who ended up producing the entire Western coffee industry. A young naval officer, Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, was in Paris on leave from Martinique, a French colony in the Carribean. Imagining Martinique as a French Java, he requested clippings from his King's tree. Permission was, however, denied. Determined, de Clieu led a moonlight raid of the King's Garden and managed to steal a seedling from the greenhouses. De Clieu set sail for Martinique only to discover the worst was still to come. On the return journey to Martinique, de Clieu was to encounter a number of setbacks. A "basely jealous" passenger attempted to steal his coffee seedling and, when unable to get the plant away from him, tore off a branch. The ship was then attacked and almost captured by pirates. Getting over that, it suffered a violent storm and when the skies became clear they became far too clear and the ship was becalmed. Water grew scarce but the young coffee tree was kept alive because de Clieu used part of his own tiny water ration to water it. On arriving in the Carribean, de Clieu planted the tree on his own estate in Martinique where, under armed guard, it yielded a total of about 18 million trees by 1777. The French and the Dutch were, like the Arabs before them, anxious to protect their monopoly over cultivation. Brazil's emperor, however, wanted a cut of the coffee market and, in 1727, he send Lt. Col. Francisco de Melo Palheta to French Guiana to mediate a border dispute between the French and Dutch. Not only did the Colonel settle the dispute but he also managed to initiate an affair between him and the governor's wife. The plan payed off and, as a farewell gift at a state dinner, she presented him with a sly token of affection: a bouquet in which she hid cuttings and the fertile seeds of coffee. It is from these shoots that the world's greatest coffee empire and the great coffee plantations of Latin America emerged. By 1800 Brazil's monster harvests would turn coffee from a drink for the elite into an everyday drink for the people. More recently, the welfare of growing areas has become of more concern and so there is a greater degree of control over the turning of land into coffee plantations and better trading deals are being negotiated. The twentieth century has seen a number of important developments in coffee including the development of both instant and decaffeinated coffees. Decaffeinated coffee was first invented in 1903 when a German coffee importer, Ludwig Roselius, turned a batch of ruined coffee beans over to researchers. Although not the first to remove caffeine, they perfected the process of removing caffeine from the beans without destroying any flavour. He marketed the coffee under the brand name "Sanka" (a contraction of "sans caffeine"). Sanka was introduced into the US in 1923. The first soluble coffee was invented by a Japanese-American chemist called Satori Kato who lived in Chicago. However, the first mass produced instant coffee, was the invention of George Constant Washington, an English chemist living in Guatemala. While waiting for his wife one day to join him in the garden for coffee, he noticed on the spout of the silver coffee pot, a fine powder, which seemed to be the condensation of the coffee vapours. This intrigued him and led to his discovery of soluble coffee.
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