What is Arabica?
Arabica (Coffea arabica) is the species behind nearly every coffee worth savoring — all and roughly 60% of world production. It's the delicate, flavorful, aromatic species: lower caffeine than robusta, harder to farm, and capable of the flavors that make possible.
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Arabica is actually one recent natural hybrid: a chance cross between Coffea canephora (robusta's species) and Coffea eugenioides in Ethiopia's forests, then self-pollinating into its own species. That accident gave arabica its flavor — complex sugars, lipids and aromatic precursors — and its fragility: low genetic diversity from a historical bottleneck, which makes it vulnerable to leaf rust, the coffee berry borer, and warming climates. It needs and cool nights, which is why arabica farming concentrates on mountains. Its varieties — Typica, Bourbon, , , SL28 and hundreds more — are the names on good coffee bags. Arabica's share of production is slipping as climate change pushes farms toward hardier robusta, making 'who grows the arabica of the future' one of the industry's live questions.
- ·World Coffee Research(No direct source link provided)