Harnessing Genetic Biochemical and Quality Diversity in Coffee

Coffea canephora (Pierre ex A. Froehner) or Robusta coffee as is commonly known constitutes 80% of Ugandan coffee production is cultivated by 8 million farmers on 270000 hectares per year and contributes a total of 240 US million dollars annual earnings to the economy. This potential has for a long time been hindered by the lack of information on the extent of the genetic and phenotypic diversity of the cultivated C. canephora and the effects of environment on the coffee quality. This book addresses some of these challenges and presents experimental data that analyzed the genotypic phenotypic biochemical and quality variability present in the cultivated germ-plasm of C. canephora. The results of the experiments in this book demonstrate that there is enormous genetic biochemical and phenotypic diversity in Ugandan Robusta which has so far remained unexploited by both researchers and farmers.