The Hindu Business Line : Robusta, without caffeine!

Naturally-produced decaffeinated coffee or caffeine-less coffee may soon become a reality in India. The Mysore-based Central Food Technological Research Institute has developed a new robusta coffee variety that has zero-level caffeine.

After six years of research, a team of scientists at CFTRI ,led by Mr Arun Chandrashekar and Ms Bhagyalakshmi Neelwarne of the Plants Cell Biotechnology Department, have been successfully able to develop the new variety by switching off the gene that’s responsible for caffeine synthesis in the coffee plant.

The traditional robusta coffee contains about 5-6 per cent of caffeine and in the new variety the caffeine level is almost reduced to zero, Mr Chandrashekar said. “We can have another variant wherein the caffeine content is low at 1-2 per cent,” he said.

The genetically modified caffeine-less variety was handed over to the Coffee Board by CFTRI officials at Mysore recently.

The Coffee Board Chairman, Mr G.V. Krishna Rau, said the board may take another two to three years for conducting field trials of the caffeine-less variety.

India is the second country in the world after Japan to develop a low caffeine coffee variety. The development of this new variety assumes major significance as the popularity of decaffeinated coffee in the Western countries and Japan gains momentum as health conscious coffee drinkers globally are seen shifting to decaf coffee.

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