Better Coffee Through DNA
Brazil has announced the creation of a coffee DNA data bank, which will help the country improve the quality and size of its coffee crop. The story was reported by the AP, here on CNN.com.
Brazil’s agricultural research agency and the Sao Paulo State Research Foundation worked on the Coffee Genome Project over the past two years, mapping 200,000 coffee DNA sequences. Now they hope the data bank, a collection of DNA sequences from different coffee plants, will help them learn how to engineer the plants to improve the flavor and aroma of the brewed beverage.
Coffee is one of several commercial crops geneticists have been studying, including rice, corn, and wine grapes.
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