Study: Fungus that Devastated Coffee Crops Not Caused by Climate Change
A study published Monday in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B debunked reports that climate change is responsible for a plant fungus that devastated coffee crops in Colombia. “Media reports have linked coffee leaf rust — also known as CLR or roya — with climate change, but the new research finds ‘no evidence’ for this,” an article published Monday in the Science Magazine stated. The study titled, “Modelling coffee leaf rust risk in Colombia with climate reanalysis data,” stated: “We focus particularly on Colombia, one of the world's largest coffee producers with around one million hectares under cultivation, primarily of the high-value Coffea arabica species. CLR is endemic to the centre of origin of coffee in Ethiopia, but has spread to all coffee-growing regions, reaching Brazil by 1970, and Colombia by 1983.
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