Coffee Bean Gene Mapped

brian6string writes "According to this article at ABC News Online (Australia), scientists in (where else?) Brazil say they have created the first complete map of the genetic structure of the coffee plant and Brazil's Agriculture Minister says the country will now work to develop a 'super coffee.'"

Comments

Hmmm

[Otter]

Bloomberg has a story that's less cutesy but more interesting. Some excerpts:

``This a jump of at least two decades in the race to unlock the coffee genome,'' Brazilian Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues said in a statement on his ministry's Web site.

A two-year government project studied 200,000 sequences of coffee DNA and identified 35,000 genes, which in combination give the drink its flavor and aroma, the statement said.

The DNA database will be open to Brazilian companies in about five or six years, and foreign competitors will be able to access patented information on payment of royalties, Clayton Campanhola, the head of Brazilian agricultural research agency Embrapa, was cited by Reuters as telling journalists in Brasilia.

Rodrigues told reporters that Brazil would produce a ``super coffee'' through cross-pollination of coffee plants and not through genetic modification, according to the British Broadcasting Corp.

Brazil has banned the planting and sale of genetically modified crops.

This makes minimal sense to me, although it does explain why the other stories don't mention a publication. They spend two years, it's a jump of two decades, they're done but Brazilian companies can't see the data for five or six years and foreign companies will have to offer royalties? Pardon my cynicism, but what exactly do they have right now? Some shotgun coverage? ESTs?

Meanwhile, this is a few months work for any of the major genome centers. If there's really any commercial value to this, I can't imagine the coffee industry wouldn't just sponsor a publically-available ccommercial genome, like every other major agricultural crop has or will have. No one is going to wait five years and then give Brazil royalties.

Re:Hmmm... I just rtfa

[Froze]

Note carefully what I said..."exact same result"

I am not advocating gene splicing from other organisms etc. All I find odd is that if you apply cross breeding and get gene sequence 'gattaca' it is OK, but if you use tweezers and knives and get gene sequence 'gattaca' it is evil.