Coffee plants with less caffeine

Do you dislike the taste of decaf coffee but don't want all the caffeine in a regular cup of coffee? There is a new solution; coffee plants that are genetically engineered to produce less caffeine.There are two main types of coffee: Rrobusta and Arabica. Robusta coffee accounts for about 30 percent of the world coffee market, while Coffea arabica, which produces arabica coffee, makes up the rest. Japanese researchers from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology have engineered Coffea canephora - the species of plant that produces robusta coffee - so that it has up to 70 percent less caffeine than usual. Currently, regular coffee becomes decaffeinated through a process that 'removes not only caffeine but also other aromatic compounds, resulting in tasteless products.' The new approach overcomes this disadvantage by only reducing caffeine.The researchers described how they repressed a gene in Coffea canephora that is involved in caffeine synthesis. Testing of the leaves of one-year-old modified plants showed they had 50 to 70 percent less caffeine than normal. In some people, caffeine, which is a stimulant, can cause increased heart rate and palpitations, high blood pressure and insomnia.

The researchers said that it will take another four to five years before the plants mature and begin making beans. So it is not yet known whether the beans themselves will have less caffeine - or whether they'll produce a better-tasting cup of decaf coffee. The researchers said that the transgenic plants described here should yield coffee beans that are essentially normal apart from their low caffeine content at maturity.The next step, according to the researchers, would be an attempt to 'decaffeinate' the latter species of coffee plant.

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