The original coffee plant of the Hybrid of Timor: historical, economic and social importance and value.

Abstract

The original plant of the hybrid of Timor, is the result of the crossing of arabic species, with 44 chromosomes, not rust resistant, with robust species, rust resistent, with 22 chromosome. This unlikely crossing, due to the Arabic species has twice the chromosomes of the robusta species, happened in the 1930s by a fluke of nature in Timor Leste. The original plant of the hybrid of Timor is a unique plant in the world, resistant to the coffee rust, Hemileia vastatrix, and their progenies and clones were used to obtain varieties of Arabica coffee rust resistant, as Catimor. This new varieties of Arabic coffee allow to improve and even to save vast plantations of Arabic coffee all over the world. The Arabic coffee producing countries have to Timor-Leste, and also to those who were able to evaluate its merits and then studied and worked, a debt of sentimental gratitude for the donation of this “hybrid of Timor”, because from it cultivars where obtained with good yield potential and resistant to rust, which today form the basis world Arabic coffee production (Ferrão 2002). Apart from the historical, heritage, botanical, biological, option, bequest or legacy values, that should be utilized in the most appropriate manner by the government of Timor-Leste, the seeds from the original plant of the hybrid of Timor should be harvested to continue to be used in agricultural research in order to obtain new varieties of Arabica coffee resistant to the rust, to the diseases affecting the fruit of the coffee and to nematodes.