Get Ready for a Coffee Renaissance. Thanks, Genetics!

[Matt] So you consider yourself a coffee geek?

You're obsessed with where it's sourced,

how it's roasted, and the million ways you can brew it.

Well, these guys are the supreme coffee geeks.

They've helped sequence the genome of a coffee plant

and made the data public.

That's huge for breeders and for consumers like you and me.

Specifically, the scientists looked at the genes

of the geisha variety of coffee plant,

which is renowned for its complex flavors

and consequent astounding price tag.

Like over $3,000 for a half pound.

So to sequence a genome, you basically

start with collecting leaves.

We grind those leaves up and we use some detergents

and a few chemicals like ethanol,

and the key is to extract the DNA as intact as possible.

So this is the machine that does the actual sequencing,

and these are called smart cells.

In each of these, there are 150,000 individual cells

in to which DNA will drop.

The machine picks up those molecules

and starts sequencing them.

So you can see here that these are all the molecules

in one of these cells, and you get the red and yellow

and green that corresponds to the letters of the DNA.

By doing this over and over and over,

the machine slowly builds the genome.

What scientists ended up with is unprecedented insight

into how a coffee plant is built.

The genome is really the blueprint or the base

for what the genes are doing and trying to understand

why is coffee is good, and why some coffee

tastes better than other coffee,

why some coffee might grow well

in states like California, in Mexico.

The plant breeders can use that information

to rapidly combine important traits.

[Matt] That means we're about to enter

a renaissance of coffee.

Think new varieties grown in more places

with better resistance to disease.

I'll drink to that, though I probably

should have mentioned I'm more of a tea man.

Oh well.