Nestlé press release photo.
Multinational food giant Nestlé says it has developed a new high-yielding coffee variety called Star 4, while targeting the world’s largest coffee-producing market, Brazil.
In an announcement of the launch of Star 4 last week, the Swiss company said the cultivar has demonstrated relatively high production yields and overall resiliency to pests and disease.
The company went a step further to suggest that those factors represent a sustainability win for the green coffee sector as a whole, despite the proprietary nature of the development.
“The new variety is characterized by its larger bean size and coffee leaf rust resistance,” Jeroen Dijkman, head of Nestlé’s Institute of Agricultural Sciences, said in the press release. “Our field trials have demonstrated that, using similar inputs, the yields of Star 4 are substantially higher than the two most used Brazilian local varieties, which reduces its carbon footprint.”
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According to Nestlé, the new plants have been field-tested in key coffee-growing areas of São Paulo and Minas Gerais in Brazil, and the variety has successfully been registered with the nonprofit Brazilian Coffee Technology Support Foundation (Procafé).
The new Star 4 variety “possesses the characteristic taste of Brazilian coffee,” Nestlé said. Brazil remains the world’s largest producer and exporter of arabica coffee.
The launch of Star 4 follows Nestlé’s recent development of Roubi 1 and 2, which according to the company are two high-yielding and resilient robusta varieties that are currently being introduced to Nestlé supply chains in Mexico.
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