Do you really know your coffee?
A coffee bean is the seed of the coffee plant (the pit inside the red or purple fruit). The fruits, coffee cherries or coffee berries, most commonly contain two stones with their flat sides together. Coffee beans consist mostly of endosperm that contains 0.8 – 2.5 % caffeine, which is one of the main reasons the plants are cultivated. As coffee is one of the world’s most widely consumed beverages, coffee beans are a major cash crop, and an important export product for some countries.
Species of coffee plant include Coffea arabica, Coffea benghalensis, Coffea canephora, Coffea congensis, Coffea excelsa, Coffea gallienii, Coffea bonnieri, Coffea mogeneti, Coffea liberica, and Coffea stenophylla. The seeds of different species produce coffee with slightly different characteristics.
Coffea arabica accounts for about 75% of the world’s coffee trade, while Coffea canephora (syn. Coffea robusta) is cultivated where Coffea arabica does not thrive, and Coffea liberica and Coffea excelsa are grown in limited areas across the globe. In a crop of coffee, a small percentage of cherries contain a single bean, instead of the usual two. This is called a peaberry.