A More Resilient Future for Robusta 

As climate change and other pressures impact coffee production around the world, World Coffee Research (WCR) is leading efforts to develop high-performing, climate-resilient varieties. WCR recently expanded its Innovea Global Coffee Breeding Network to integrate Robusta breeding. As a WCR member, Sucafina is proud to support this essential research, which could help safeguard the future of coffee. 

 This article at a glance: 

• New, more resilient coffee varieties play an important role in strengthening supply chains amid growing environmental pressures. 
• World Coffee Research (WCR)’s Innovea breeding program, which accelerates the development of new varieties, now incorporates Robusta alongside Arabica. 
• As a WCR member, Sucafina is proud to invest in this research, supporting long-term production and farmer livelihoods.  

Why We Need New Varieties 

Coffee growing conditions are constantly evolving, requiring farmers to adapt to changing weather patterns, new disease pressures and increasing variability. Strengthening the long-term resilience of coffee supply, supporting productivity at origin and securing farmers’ livelihoods are major priorities for our industry.  

High-performing, climate-resilient varieties can help farmers mitigate the impacts of climate stress, pests and disease, improving yields and ensuring reliable supply. However, developing, testing and releasing new varieties is a long process, often taking decades. 

Addressing these challenges requires practical, long-term collaboration. This is where WCR – an industry-driven agricultural research organization dedicated to identifying and developing new coffee varieties – plays an important role. 

Scaling Up Coffee Breeding 

In 2022, WCR launched Innovea, a global coffee breeding program designed to accelerate the development of new varieties and strengthen collaboration. Innovea brings together national research institutes, governments and industry in 11 countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia.  

The network standardizes trial protocols and coordinates breeding efforts. Candidate varieties are tested across different soils, climates and disease pressures, and by pooling expertise and data, promising varieties can be identified more quickly while ensuring they are suitable for local farming systems 

Innovea’s innovative approach has already gained global recognition and it was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025. 

“We’re able to deliver step change in variety performance faster than ever before, because of how we’ve structured our breeding program,” says Vern Long, CEO of WCR. “The global collaborative model shortens the timeline for variety development from 20– 30 years down to only 8. With climate change accelerating and intensifying the challenges facing farmers, a global breeding pipeline continuously delivering better varieties will provide opportunities for farmers to strengthen their livelihoods and reduce risk to supply.” 

Planting Roots for Robusta  

Historically, breeding efforts have focused on Arabica (Coffea arabica), despite the growing prominence of Robusta (Coffea canephora), which now accounts for roughly 40% of global production. Robusta’s rise reflects not only production advantages, such as tolerance to higher temperatures and certain pests, but also market dynamics, including shifts in consumption and weather-related disruptions to Arabica supply. 

Robusta is evolutionarily much older than Arabica and has more genetic diversity. It can tolerate a broader range of conditions, but it still faces challenges including sensitivity to high temperatures and certain diseases and pests. Unlike Arabica, it cannot self-pollinate, which makes breeding more complex and requires careful management of distinct parent plants. 

WCR’s Robusta breeding began in 2024 and the species was integrated into the Innovea network in November 2025, applying the same collaborative, data-driven approach that has accelerated Arabica variety development. The expansion brought two new countries – Vietnam and Ghana – into the network and enabled existing participants – such as India, Indonesia, Rwanda and Uganda – to add global collaboration to their Robusta programs. Collectively, these countries account for around 64% of global Robusta production, ensuring the work is relevant for the wider market. 

“Globally, Robusta, as a proportion of global supply, has been growing. Yet, the pace of innovation to underpin that growth has not kept up. Bringing Robusta into the Innovea program brings the same accelerated approach to create more choices for farmers so they can participate in growth opportunities while stabilizing supply,” explains Vern Long, CEO of WCR. “The varieties created from this program will bring highly productive, resilient trees into supply chains, which will benefit farmers and the sector as a whole.” 
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​From Research to Farm 

A key goal of the Innovea network is to move promising varieties from research into real-world production. Standardized trials across multiple countries and environments test thousands of candidates to determine how they perform in different soils, climates and disease pressures, providing reliable evidence of yield stability, resilience and suitability for farmers’ needs. 

From those thousands of candidates being evaluated at a global scale, ~30–50 of the best-performing plants for each country will be identified in the next few years. They will then be multiplied and advanced for testing in national trials to confirm performance and identify the 3–5 that are best suited to that particular country–region, before they are released as new varieties.  

Once these testing networks are in place, continuously evaluating the next generations, the pipeline will continue to deliver new varieties to respond to farmers’ needs. This will bring resilient coffee to the field more quickly. While commercial release times vary and depend on the plans created in partnership with each national coffee authority, this coordinated approach helps shorten the gap from early research to adoption. 

Cultivating a Stronger Future 

Through coordinated, science-based efforts, WCR and its partners are helping build a stronger foundation for coffee production. By advancing the development of improved varieties across species and origins, initiatives like Innovea support more stable and sustainable coffee systems and help adapt to evolving environmental conditions. 

As a member of WCR, Sucafina is proud to be a part of this collaborative and innovative approach. Investing in variety research is one of the ways we are contributing to the long-term future of coffee – helping improve yields and secure income for the farmers of tomorrow.