The coffee that picked you up this morning is 600,000 years old. Researchers have found that the world's most popular type of coffee, known as arabica, emerged hundreds of thousands of years ago through natural crossbreeding of two other coffee species.

That coffee you slurped this morning? It’s 600,000 years old.

Using genes from coffee plants around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world’s most popular type of coffee, known to scientists as Coffea arabica and to coffee lovers simply as “arabica.”

The researchers, hoping to learn more about the plants to better protect them from pests and climate change, found that the species emerged around 600,000 years ago through natural crossbreeding of two other coffee species.

“In other words, prior to any intervention from man,” said Victor Albert, a biologist at the University at Buffalo who co-led the study.

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
      3·
      8 months ago

      Exactly. Science reporting is pretty awful, but in many cases the scientists enable that.

      The point of my other facetious comment is that this is not how anyone, scientists included, would define the age of a particular person’s coffee. Your coffee was grown and harvested recently. The species can be dated back a half million years. Conflating the plants and the species is misleading at best.