A wonderful book on the world of coffee: Uncommon Grounds. The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World. Mark Pendergrast. 1999
On page 43 “ it appears that the fungus thrives in moist
environments. The real villain however is monoculture. Whenever man intervenes
and creates an artificial wealth of a particular plant, nature eventually finds
a way to take advantage of this abundant food supply. Plants containing
mind-altering alkaloids such as caffeine and cocaine almost all grow in the
tropics… the competition for existence is so fierce, there being no winter to
provide a respite from the battle for survival. The caffeine content of coffee
probably evolved as a natural pesticide to discourage predators".
Page 43 “Now it seems but a question of time for coffee to
be as great a failure in Java as it has turned out to be in Ceylon”, wrote
Edwin Arnold in 1886.
Page 44 ”That bastion of traditional coffee soon switched
primarily to tea”.
“ This hardy strain of coffee [robusta] tasted harsh in
the cup and contained twice the caffeine of Arabica. Nether less, it was
destined to play an important role in the future”.
“In 1862 white explorers had observed
Ugandan native use of robusta, but no one thought of using it commercially
then. Members of the Baganda tribe separated two robusta beans from the same
berry, smeared them with their blood and thereby declared blood brotherhood”.
(footnote on page 153).
Page 153“unlike its more delicately flavored Arabica cousin, robusta- so named for its hardy growth-thrived anywhere from sea level to 3,000 feet and produced its small berries in far greater abundance.”
Page 153“unlike its more delicately flavored Arabica cousin, robusta- so named for its hardy growth-thrived anywhere from sea level to 3,000 feet and produced its small berries in far greater abundance.”
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