Scientists Grow Decaffeinated Coffee Plants

An anonymous reader writes "According to a CBC News story, researchers have genetically modified coffee seedlings to produce up to 70 per cent less caffeine." The Japanese researchers quoted in the article say "..demand for decaffeinated coffee is growing worldwide. Caffeine can trigger palpitations, increase blood pressure and disrupt sleep in sensitive people", and so "..used a tool called RNA interference to genetically engineer the one-year-old plants." Seems like these boffins may be competing against the University Of Hawaii researchers we mentioned last year to take away your buzz.

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Info About Coffee

[bace]

Firstly Coffee is the second most traded comodity, behind oil.

The way most coffee is decafinated these days is with a process called the "Swiss water method".
This involves soaking unroasted coffee beans in water. The water absorbs the coffee flavor and the caffine.
These beans are then trown out, the water is filtered of caffine, and only caffine. To do this the water is pased through a carbon filter.
The result is decaf coffee flavoured water. This water is used to soak a new batch of beans. Scince the water is super saturated with coffee flavour, it cannot abosorb any more flavour, but it can still absorb caffine. So the caffine is removed from the beans whilst keeping the flavour. The water is used for about 3 batches then the whole process starts again with new water.

The extra steps involved in decafinating coffee is what makes it a bit more expensive. So next time you have a decaf coffee, just think of all the steps involved to make it that way. Ohh by the way, coffee needs do be 97% free of caffine to be called decaf.

If you want to know how i know all this, i help roast coffee for Gloria Jeans