After synthetic meat, here is the coffee designed in the laboratory. Finnish scientists say they have found a revolutionary technique.
Posted
Reading time : 1 min.
These scientists from the Finnish National Center for Technical Research have succeeded in making coffee bean cells multiply in the laboratory, until they obtain a kind of cellular paste. Once roasted, it actually gives a powder with a taste similar to that of ground coffee and from which you can prepare espresso or long coffee as usual. The rare testers of this laboratory coffee claim that it tastes less bitter.
But the interest of this synthetic coffee is not taste, say the Finnish researchers. It is environmental: in a context of global warming, they argue that their production method uses less water than growing coffee on plantations. And with this technique, no more coffee that is imported by boat from the other side of the world: their synthetic coffee would therefore be more ecological.
We do not yet know the carbon footprint of this cell culture which, pushed to an industrial stage, would require that we have large sheds lit and heated 24 hours a day, with a controlled supply of sugar, water and nutrients for the cells. coffee beans can proliferate. We would avoid transport, but today we are able to grow coffee with a neutral carbon footprint, explains Benoît Bertrand, specialist in the coffee sector at CIRAD (center for international cooperation in agricultural research and development). In addition, coffee plantations do not consume a lot of phytosanitary products, they are used three to four times less than for apples or vines. Finally, coffee cultivation provides a livelihood for 25 million people around the world: removing it to produce synthetic coffee would be an economic disaster for all these producers.
For the moment, it is still experimental and complicated to grow coffee in Europe. But with global warming, scientists estimate that technically, within 20 or 30 years, we should be able to develop the cultivation of arabica coffee plants in Europe. And maybe even before, with greenhouse cultivation. In the United States, California has already been growing coffee in the open field for about fifteen years.