World Coffee Research, Borlaug Institute partner with coffee industry in research, response

COLLEGE STATION — The continuing fight against the widespread coffee rust disease affecting Central America and the Caribbean is the subject of a new 2 1/2-minute video produced by the Texas A&M University Division of Research headquartered in College Station.

In the video, scientists of World Coffee Research and the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture explain their multi-pronged approach to fighting a coffee rust epidemic that has devastated farmers in these regions since 2012, causing specialty coffee prices to spike in the U.S. and across the globe.

World Coffee Research is a nonprofit, collaborative research and development program of the global coffee industry whose mission is to grow, protect, and enhance supplies of quality coffee while improving the livelihoods of the families who produce it. The Borlaug Institute, headquartered in College Station and part of the Texas A&M University System, designs and implements science-based development projects and training programs that fight hunger and poverty by strengthening agricultural capabilities among small-landholder communities of the developing world.

The video outlines a partnership that began this May among World Coffee Research, the Borlaug Institute and members of the world’s coffee industry to battle the disease.

The partnership, funded in part by the United States Agency for International Development, supports research on rust-resistant coffee varieties and addresses the continuing shortage of disease-resistant coffee seedlings. Partners work to expand the capability of the region’s coffee institutions to monitor and respond to issues related to coffee rust.

For more information on research at Texas A&M, go to http://research.tamu.edu.

To view the video, go to http://research.tamu.edu/coffee-rust.

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