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

obvious mod

[Froze]

Make it produce 20 times the caffiene of a normal bean. Then it can compete with brazils other export the coca plant.

Re:obvious mod

[macdaddy357]

Already the inferior bitter tasting species, robusta, has twice as much caffeine as Arabica, the good tasting stuff. Already, a pot of purely robusta will give you the shakes. 20 times more caffeine might be lethal.

Hmmm... I just rtfa

[Froze]

They are going to use the mapped gene literally as a map. Since Brazil has banned GMO's the genome will be used as a guide for determining which cross pollinations etc. will be most effective.

So if you modify the genes by natural methods its not GM, but if you use artificial means to accomplish the exact same result, it is GM. God! I love the un-inteeligent masses that find this acceptable.

Re:Hmmm... I just rtfa

[wind]

So if you modify the genes by natural methods its not GM, but if you use artificial means to accomplish the exact same result, it is GM. God! I love the un-inteeligent masses that find this acceptable.

Clarification question: Find GM acceptable or find this supposed confounding acceptable?

Anyway, call me Dr. Stupid, but I think there is a substantive difference between having the means to be really selective about your breeding and splicing genetic code out of one species to put into another.

It seems to me that we are where we are today because clever, patient people "genetically modified" their animals and crops through careful breeding. I don't see how what Brazil is proposing is different. I'm pleased that they'd using this method instead of going in with the high tech equivalent of knives and tweezers to play switcheroo and put genes together in combinations that nature hasn't pre-tested for us.

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.

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.