Starmaya coffee facts for kids

Starmaya is a special type of coffee plant. It is an F1 hybrid, which means it comes from two different parent plants. What makes Starmaya unique is that it can be grown from seeds. Other F1 hybrid coffee plants often need a complex lab process called somatic embryogenesis (SE).

One of Starmaya's parent plants cannot make pollen. This makes it easier for scientists to control how the plant is pollinated. Starmaya plants can produce a lot of coffee beans. They are also strong against a common plant sickness called coffee leaf rust. When grown in higher places, Starmaya coffee can taste very good.

Scientists found a way to grow Starmaya seeds in a special "seed garden." This method is much cheaper and easier than the lab process. Starmaya is the first F1 hybrid coffee plant grown successfully this way. This new method makes it easier for more farmers to grow these special hybrid plants.

The Starmaya coffee plant is being protected by special rules. These rules are like a patent for new plant types. They are managed by an organization called the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).

How Coffee Plants Reproduce

A coffee tree branch can have many flowers.

Coffee plants can usually pollinate themselves. This means they can make seeds without needing pollen from another plant. For scientists who want to create new types of coffee, this can be tricky. They need to control which plants share pollen.

To do this, scientists often have to remove the male parts from each coffee flower by hand. A single branch can have dozens of flowers! Then, they collect pollen from a specific "father" plant. They carefully brush this pollen onto the female parts of the "mother" flower. This way, they can make sure the new plant has the traits they want.

New ways to breed plants make this process simpler and cheaper. This helps more farmers get access to special coffee plants.

Using Male-Sterile Plants

In farming, it's common to use "male-sterile" parent plants to create F1 hybrids. These plants cannot produce their own pollen. This makes it easier to control which pollen fertilizes them. Starmaya is the first F1 hybrid coffee plant known to use a male-sterile parent.

Using male-sterile plants is key for growing F1 hybrids in seed gardens. However, scientists must still be careful. They need to make sure that pollen from other nearby coffee trees doesn't accidentally pollinate the plants. They do this by:

• Planting the seed garden far away from other coffee trees.
• Controlling insects that might carry unwanted pollen.

Starmaya's Story

Developing Starmaya Coffee

In 2001, scientists from the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) made an important discovery. They found a natural Coffea arabica plant, called CIR-SM01, that did not produce any pollen. This plant was "male-sterile."

Male-sterile plants are great for breeding programs. Scientists don't have to remove the male parts of the flowers. The researchers checked that this male-sterile trait was stable. They also found that it was a recessive trait. This means both parent plants must carry the trait for it to show up in their offspring. So, Starmaya itself is not male-sterile.

The scientists then crossed CIR-SM01 with four different types of dwarf coffee plants. These included Caturra red, Catuai 44, IAPAR59, and Marsellesa. They wanted to see if they could create F1 hybrid seeds.

They found that crossing CIR-SM01 with Marsellesa worked very well. This new plant was named Starmaya. It produced 30% more coffee beans than its Marsellesa parent. Starmaya also had good coffee quality and was resistant to coffee leaf rust.

Coffee Quality (Cupping)

In the world of specialty coffee, taste is very important. Experts use a process called cupping to judge coffee quality. They evaluate many things, like:

• How it smells (fragrance)
• How it tastes (flavor)
• The taste left in your mouth (aftertaste)
• Its brightness (acidity)
• How it feels in your mouth (body)
• How balanced the flavors are

Each quality is rated on a scale from 0 to 100. Any coffee scoring 80 or higher is considered "specialty coffee." In a study, Starmaya received an overall score of 82.5. This was very close to its parent plant Marsellesa (83.13) and another control plant, Caturra red (82.9). This shows Starmaya produces high-quality coffee.

Rust Resistance

Coffee leaf rust is a very serious disease for coffee plants worldwide. It can cause huge losses for farmers. The best way to fight this disease is to grow coffee plants that are naturally resistant to it.

Starmaya was created to show that F1 hybrid seeds could be mass-produced. But scientists also checked how well it resisted coffee leaf rust. One of Starmaya's parent plants, Marsellesa, showed only 1% weakness to rust in the field. Starmaya itself showed 8% weakness.

Scientists believe Starmaya's resistance can get even better. They think this can happen by making the Marsellesa parent plant's traits more predictable. Also, some of the rust in the early Starmaya trials might have been due to unwanted pollen from other plants.

The Seed Garden

The seed garden was set up to grow Starmaya seeds. They used CIR-SM01 as the male-sterile "mother" plant. Marsellesa was the "father" plant that provided the pollen. For every one mother plant, there were four father plants.

The plants were placed 2 meters apart in rows, and 1.5 meters apart within each row. This allowed for 4,000 coffee trees in an area the size of a hectare (about 2.5 acres). This setup helped the plants pollinate each other naturally and efficiently.

The seeds grown in this garden successfully became F1 hybrid Starmaya plants. This proved that a seed garden can produce F1 hybrids. It costs about half as much as using the complex somatic embryogenesis lab method. It's estimated that one seed garden hectare could produce half a million F1 hybrid seeds each year.

This lower cost and simpler method make it much easier for farmers to use F1 hybrid coffee plants. This helps more people benefit from these special, high-quality plants.