Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers

A Brazilian scientist says he's found a rare variety of coffee plant with shockingly low-levels of caffeine. Paulo Mazzafera of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil announced his discovery in the science journal Nature on June 20, 2004, after research was undertaken in Brazil on 3000 coffee plants from Ethiopia.

Not two weeks later, Hailue Gebre Hiwot, President of the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association [ECEA], demanded that Mazzafera explain how he was able to take thousands of coffee specimens, which had been collected from Ethiopian forests in the 1980s.

"The ownership of the plant is Ethiopian. The scientist should have informed ... Ethiopian authorities first before making any such announcement, as if it belongs to Brazil." Hiwot told Reuters the plants were Ethiopian and the Brazilian scientist "could face charges for illegally taking Ethiopian property."

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has also told Reuters his government is looking into the issue seriously.

Mazzafera countered, "If people had actually bothered to read my research they would know that Ethiopian officials and experts were part of the international UN mission that collected the wild varieties of coffee in 1964."

Tensions are understandably high, in an industry which the International Coffee Organization, ICO, estimated in 2002 as generating $70 billion in global retail sales. Decaffeinated coffee accounts for about 10 percent of that market, but an unprocessed, uncaffeinated bean would create an entirely new coffee market.

Elsewhere in coffee news, scientists in Japan have developed a decaffeinated genetically modified coffee plant. In 2003, researchers at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan used RNA interference to suppress the gene responsible for an enzyme used to make caffeine.

Neither the naturally low-caffeine bean nor the genetically modified one will be ready for commercial production before the end of the decade.