Benoit Bertrand

Cirad - La recherche agronomique pour le développement | CIRAD · Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD)

Background: The effects of the environment and genotype in the coffee bean chemical composition were studied using 9 trials covering an altitudinal gradient (600-1100 m.a.s.l) with 3 genotypes of Coffea arabica in the Northwest mountainous region of Vietnam. The impacts of the climatic conditions on bean physical characteristics and chemical compo...

Background: Worldwide coffee production, especially Arabica coffee, is threatened by climatic change, plants diseases and vulnerability of smallholders. Meanwhile, consumers’ demand for socially and environmentally sustainable products is steadily increasing, driving the engagement of stakeholders in agro-ecological and social initiatives. Here we...

Background Somatic embryogenesis (SE) is one of the most promising processes for large-scale dissemination of elite varieties. However, for many plant species, optimizing SE protocols still relies on a trial and error approach. We report the first global scale transcriptome profiling performed at all developmental stages of SE in coffee to unravel...

Background Somatic embryogenesis (SE) is one of the most promising processes for large-scale dissemination of elite varieties. However, for many plant species, optimizing SE protocols still relies on a trial and error approach. We report the first global scale transcriptome profiling performed at all developmental stages of SE in coffee to unravel...

Climate change (CC) is already impacting Arabica coffee cultivation in the intertropical zone. To deal with this situation, it is no longer possible to manage this crop using industrial agriculture techniques, which has been the main strategy implemented since the Green Revolution. Developing a more sustainable agriculture system that respects peop...

Genomic prediction (GP) has revolutionized crop breeding despite remaining issues of transfer-ability of models to unseen environmental conditions and environments. Usage of endophenotypes rather than genomic markers leads to the possibility of building phenomic prediction (PP) models that can account, in part, for this challenge. Here, we compare...

Genomic prediction (GP) has revolutionized crop breeding despite remaining issues of transferability of models to unseen environmental conditions and environments. Usage of endophenotypes rather than genomic markers leads to the possibility of building phenomic prediction (PP) models that can account, in part, for this challenge. Here, we compare a...

The coffee research community has maintained a long ongoing debate regarding the implications of shade trees in coffee production. Historically, there has been contrasting results and opinions on this matter, thus recommendations for the use of shade (namely in coffee agroforestry systems) are often deemed controversial, particularly due to potenti...

Background: Worldwide coffee production, especially Arabica coffee, is threatened by climatic change, plants diseases and vulnerability of smallholders. Meanwhile, consumers’ demand for socially and environmentally sustainable products is steadily increasing, driving the engagement of stakeholders in agro-ecological and social initiatives. Here we...

Description. Coffee cultivation plays an important economic and social role in Côte d'Ivoire. Among the dozens of Coffea species, only Coffea canephora, also known as robusta, is grown in the country. The genetic improvement of this species has been the subject of a selection program set up by the National Center for Agronomic Research (CNRA). This...

Canephora coffee is an important source of income and employment, contributing significantly to the economies of many developing countries. This species is split into two genetic groups: Guinean and Congolese. Côte-d’Ivoire is the primary diversification center of the Guinean pool, which offers great potential for genetic improvement. However, gene...

Le café Arabica (Coffea arabica), essentiellement Catimor est une production de rente très importante pour les petits producteurs dans les provinces de Son La et Dien Bien (Nord du pays). Cette culture est très sensible aux maladies et aux changement climatiques. Le prix est également très lié à la qualité finale du produit Le projet BREEDCAFS/EU (...

So far, the main Arabica coffee breeding programmes in Latin America have focused on the selection of varieties adapted to intensive full-sun farming systems. Meanwhile, little attention has been paid to breeding varieties specifically adapted to shade, which is the main characteristic of agroforestry systems (AFS). Yet the specialty coffee sector...

Background Photoperiod length induces in temperate plants major changes in growth rates, morphology, and metabolism, with for example modifications in the partitioning of photosynthates to avoid starvation at the end of long nights. However, this has never been studied for a tropical perennial species adapted to grow in a natural photoperiod close...

Conventional American cultivars of coffee are no longer adapted to global warming. Finding highly productive and stable cultivars in different environments without neglecting quality characteristics has become a priority for breeders. In this study, new Arabica F1 hybrids clones were compared to conventional American varieties in seven contrasting...

Conventional American cultivars of coffee are no longer adapted to global warming. Finding highly productive and stable cultivars in different environments without neglecting quality characteristics has become a priority for breeders. In this study, new Arabica F1 hybrids clones were compared to conventional American varieties in seven contrasting...

Background Locating the optimal varieties for coffee cultivation is increasingly considered a key condition for sustainable production and marketing. Variety performance varies when it comes to susceptibility to coffee leaf rust and other diseases, adaptation to climate change and high cup quality for specialty markets. But because of poor organiza...

The genome of the allotetraploid species Coffea arabica L. was sequenced to assemble independently the two component subgenomes (putatively deriving from C. canephora and C. eugenioides) and to perform a genome-wide analysis of the genetic diversity in cultivated coffee germplasm and in wild populations growing in the center of origin of the specie...

Background: It is now well documented that moonlight affects the life cycle of invertebrates, birds, reptiles, and mammals. The lunisolar tide is also well-known to alter plant growth and development. However, although plants are known to be very photosensitive, few studies have been undertaken to explore the effect of moonlight on plant physiolog...

Phenolic compounds are involved in plant response to environmental conditions and are highly present in leaves of Coffea arabica L., originally an understory shrub. To increase knowledge of C. arabica leaf phenolic compounds and their patterns in adaptation to light intensity, mature leaves of Ethiopian wild accessions, American pure lines and thei...

In the present paper, we evaluated the implementation of a seed production system based on the exploitation of male sterility on coffee. We studied specifically the combination between CIR-SM01 and Marsellesa ® (a Sarchimor line), which provides a hybrid population called Starmaya. We demonstrated that the establishment of seed garden under natural...

Objectives. The BREEDCAFS project is testing CIRAD-CATIE-ECOM new F1 hybrids* of Coffea arabica-high yielding, resistant to abiotic stresses and adapted to agroforestry-in three coffee producing countries. In collaboration with NOMAFSI and AGI Vietnamese research Institutions, an experimental trial and a network of twelve farmers' plots have been s...

In a context where climate change is threatening coffee productivity, the management of coffee leaf rust is a challenging issue. Major resistant genes, which have been used for many years, are systematically being overcome by pathogens. Developing healthy plants, able to defend themselves and be productive even when attacked by the pathogen, should...

Since the 1990s, somatic embryogenesis (SE) has enabled the propagation of selected varieties, Arabica F1 hybrid and Robusta clones, originating from the two cultivated coffee species, Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora, respectively. This paper shows how mostly empirical research has led to successful industrial transfers launched in the 2000s in...

Like many other crops, coffee production is threatened by climate changes. Therefore, research on coffee adaptation to abiotic stresses as well as alternative faster breeding programs are priorities in many coffee growing countries. During the last decade, studies have been focused on identifying the physiological, molecular and genetic determinism...

Global warming is a major threat to agriculture worldwide. Between 2008 and 2013, some coffee producing countries in South and Central America suffered from severe epidemics of coffee leaf rust (CLR), resulting in high economic losses with social implications for coffee growers. The climatic events not only favored the development of the pathogen b...

The understorey origin of coffee trees and the strong plasticity of Coffea arabica leaves in relation to contrasting light environments have been largely shown. The adaptability of coffee leaves to changes in light was tested under controlled conditions by increasing the illumination rate on C. arabica var. Naryelis seedlings acclimated to low ligh...

Despite the importance of the DREB1D gene (also known as CBF4) in plant responses to water deficit and cold stress, studies analysing its regulation by transgenic approaches are lacking. In the current work, a functional study of three CcDREB1D promoter haplotypes (named HP15, HP16 and HP17) isolated from drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive clon...

In general, the current industrial somatic embryogenesis (SE) propagation processes for coffee are costly because they are not productive enough. We show that SE-derived plantlets from C. arabica hybrids were temporarily − between 10 and 25 weeks of development in nursery − able to root with a high success rate (up to 90%) whatever the genotype tes...

The RNAzol RT reagent was used to provide pure RNA from human cells. We develop a protocol using RNAzol RT reagent to extract pure RNA from plants tissues and demonstrate that this RNA extraction method works not only at room temperature but also at elevated temperatures and provides the simplest and most effective single-step method to extract pur...

Background The coffee species Coffea canephora is commercially identified as “Conilon” when produced in Brazil, or “Robusta” when produced elsewhere in the world. It represents approximately 40 % of coffee production worldwide. While the genetic diversity of wild C. canephora has been well studied in the past, only few studies have addressed the ge...

In plants, undifferentiated or totally differentiated cells can be easily in vitro cultured to generate undifferentiated embryogenic cells that can regenerate complete plants. This is the most spectacular expression of totipotency. Embryogenic cells represent a key material in plant biotechnologies as they are used in many processes aiming at asexu...

The impacts of climate change on coffee trees are hard to foresee and dependent on the cropping system (ranging from high input monocultures to almost natural agroforestry associations), soil and water resources. Pests and diseases are also affected. Research on adaptation to climate change is mainly focused on cereals but there are few studies on...

To comply with the intensive industrial agriculturemodel of the Green Revolution, the modern plant breeding combines professionalized variety selection using germplasm conserved ex situ and commercial production of seeds. This model has beenwidely adopted in the North and very partially in the South because it is based on strong policies options an...

Polyploidy impacts the diversity of plant species, giving rise to novel phenotypes and leading to ecological diversification. In order to observe adaptive and evolutionary capacities of polyploids, we compared the growth, primary metabolism and transcriptomic expression level in the leaves of the newly formed allotetraploid Coffea arabica species c...

Long-term cell cultures were used in coffee to study the cytological, genetic and epigenetic changes occurring during cell culture ageing. The objective was to identify the mechanisms associated with somaclonal variation (SV). Three embryogenic cell lines were established in Coffea arabica (2n = 4x = 44) and somatic seedlings were regenerated after...

Arabica coffees (60 % of current world coffee production) are generally sold at considerably better prices than robustas on account of superior beverage quality. However, costs of production are much higher, mainly due to more stringent demands for soil and climatic conditions, crop management, primary processing and control of several pests and di...

Reserve compounds and secondary metabolites that accumulate in mature coffee seeds contribute to a large extent– directly or through roasting-induced chemical reactions – to the broad spectrum of aromas and flavours of the coffee brew. Although cultivation of coffee trees under shade or at high elevation is known to favorably affect coffee quality,...

Embryogenic potential is a key trait for the multiplication of promising hybrid genotypes of coffee for experimental and commercial purposes. Therefore, the embryogenic potential was determined in 29 two year-old hybrids resulting from crosses between 10 wild C. arabica accessions from Ethiopia with 3 maternal lines (CU1842, CX2385 and CX2848) obta...

Coffee is a valuable beverage crop due to its characteristic flavor, aroma, and the stimulating effects of caffeine. We generated a high-quality draft genome of the species Coffea canephora, which displays a conserved chromosomal gene order among asterid angiosperms. Although it shows no sign of the whole-genome triplication identified in Solanacea...

Plant breeding is the activity of developing diverse plant varieties that can contribute usefully to cropping and production systems. These breeding efforts are directed at plant improvement. But ‘improvement’ is a subjective and relative goal and it becomes necessary to regularly break up plant breeding objectives and procedures into clearly defin...

The diversity of root knot nematodes parasitizing coffee orchards in Central America was newly assessed through a broad regional survey. Populations of Meloidogyne spp. were identified by their esterase phenotype. Eleven esterase phenotypes were observed and nine species identified. Meloidogyne exigua was the most widely distributed while M. arabic...

The seed of Coffea arabica accumulates large amounts of cell wall storage polysaccharides (CWSPs) of the mannan family in the cell walls of the endosperm. The variability induced by the growing environment and extensive pairwise correlation analysis with stringent significance thresholds was used to investigate transcript-transcript and transcript-...

Polyploidy has occurred throughout the evolutionary history of plants and led to diversification and plant ecological adaptation. Functional plasticity of duplicate genes is believed to play a major role in the environmental adaptation of polyploids. In this context, we characterized genome-wide homoeologous gene expression in Coffea arabica, a rec...

In Coffea arabica L., the development of direct sowing of somatic embryos (SE) in planting substrate, with subsequent nursery production of plants, has promoted the industrialization of somatic embryogenesis. However, plant conversion rates are still low and require improvements to enhance the cost-effectiveness of commercial micropropagation. With...

Embryogenic suspensions that involve extensive cell division are risky in respect to genome and epigenome instability. Elevated frequencies of somaclonal variation in embryogenic suspension-derived plants were reported in many species, including coffee. This problem could be overcome by using culture conditions that allow moderate cell proliferatio...

This study was aimed at determining whether climatic conditions during bean development affected the chemical composition of the seed, the sensory perception of the coffee beverage and combinations of volatile compounds in green coffee. Using 16 experimental plots in Reunion Island displaying broad climatic variations, we showed that chlorogenic ac...

Root-knot nematodes, Meloidogyne incognita in Guatemala and Meloidogyne sp. in El Salvador frequently cause very serious damage to Coffea arabica. Hypocotyledon grafting on C. canephoravar. Robusta is practiced on a very wide scale to control these pests. However, rootstock seeds come from non selected trees which provide 30–40%resistance. In this...

agr.2012.0558 Auteur(s) : Andre Charrier1 hacharrier@orange.fr, Benoit Bertrand2 benoit.bertrand@cirad.fr, Philippe Lashermes3 philippe.lashermes@ird.fr 1 Montpellier SupAgro 2, place Pierre Viala 34060 Montpellier cedex 2 France 2 Cirad UMR RPB (Cirad, IRD, universite Montpellier II) IRD 911, avenue Agropolis BP 64501 34394 Montpellier cedex 5 Fra...

Creation and dissemination of Arabica coffee varieties: What varietal innovations? Over 80 % of all Coffea arabica - a species of African origin - is produced in Latin America. The gene pool of C. arabica, which was introduced in Latin America in the 19th century, includes only two relatively similar varieties (Bourbon and Typica). Despite this ver...