Imagine if your morning coffee routine was totally disrupted? What’s going to wake you up now? What’s going to replace that aroma that brings smile to faces around the world?

In a warming world, that is an important question. Climate change is bringing on drought and heat, along with it, pests that thrive in warm weather. And our beloved plant is at risk.

Be it Starbucks or your favorite go-to local roaster, almost always, you walk out with arabica (Coffea arabica) or robusta (Coffea canephora). These two coffee species account for roughly 60% and 40% of traded coffee, respectively, because of their strong taste profile and high productivity across a range of environments. With extreme climate patterns emerging, many coffee producers are looking for new solutions beyond traditional methods and farming arabica and robusta.

To problem solve, we often look to the future for solutions. But for coffee, the answer might lie in the past. Meet Coffea stenophylla (hereafter stenophylla). Historical documentation noted its heat drought, and leaf rust tolerant qualities. It also praised stenophylla’s flavor with the phrase, “surpassing that of Arabica”. Superb flavor profile is what distinguishes stenophylla from 120 other known Coffea species and why this plant may go on to conquer the coffee world. While many other species can also tolerate warmer and drier climates relative to arabica and robusta, none of them taste very good.

Coffee experts have known about the species, but due to its low yields in the past, this species drew little attention and was gradually lost as farmers largely focused on cultivating arabica and robusta. Do stenophylla’s qualities really live up to its past praises? Status as a lost species meant the answer remain unanswered…until now.

Researchers from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the U.K recently rediscovered C. stenophylla (hereafter stenophylla) in Sierra Leone. The same research study also conducted blind tasting among professionals. Stenophylla’s scores rivaled if not exceeded that of arabica and robusta. What’s more, as they reported in Nature Plants, stenophylla has the potential to help coffee industry weather environmental challenges like heat, drought, and pests.

How would stenophylla do so exactly? First, there exist several ways to build climate resilience within the coffee industry.

One option is to move to higher elevation where temperatures will be lower. But higher elevation lands might be unsuitable or already occupied. The second involves improving farming practices (e.g., more efficient irrigation). But, again, better irrigation is of little use if precipitation remains low overall.

A third approach is breeding a new plant variety with more desired traits or to adopt growing new coffee crop species. The challenge lies in time consumption. Traditional breeding takes multiple rounds such that the final product contains only desirable traits such that a full decade may pass by the time a new desirable cultivar emerges. With stenophylla in the picture, this third approach is becoming more promising because rather than breeding a new species, devoting efforts directly towards adopting stenophylla across farmlands may yield  fruitful results sooner.

Modeling suggests that stenophylla can tolerate average temperatures upwards of 6 degrees Celsius compared to Arabica. This makes a strong case for growing stenophylla in place of arabica or robusta in the future.

While specialty coffee consumers would certainly be eager to experience a new variety with a distinct taste profile, these recent findings on stenophylla have bigger implications beyond this niche group. Stenophylla’s superb flavor profile means that producers (especially those on the commercial coffee market threatened by price crashes) can put “better quality” coffee on the market and receive better price offers.

From paving the way for greater success on coffee farms, to potentially outcompeting what is in most commercial coffee consumers’ cups these days with its fruity tendency, this new research highlights stenophylla’s role in one of the most popular beverages in the world is certainly worth paying attention to.