The Coffee Board of India, on Friday, in its report on post-monsoon coffee crop forecast for 2007-08, said that the country’s coffee production is likely to decline 9.97 per cent to 2.67 lakh tonnes, against previous year’s post-blossom estimate of  2.91 lakh tonnes.

Heavy rainfall combined with strong wind in the last monsoon caused major crop losses in Karnataka and Kerala, two  major coffee cultivating states. This has intensified the decline in overall production, the report said.
Karnataka has witnessed heavy production loss of 7 per cent followed by Kerala at 17 per cent, it added.

New variety
Incidentally, the Central Coffee Research Institute and Coffee Board of India released a new Arabica coffee plant variety — Chandragiri. “The field trials and evaluations carried out by the Institute have established that the new variety can be exploited in almost all coffee growing regions in the country,” said Coffee Board Chairman G V Krishna Rau. “The semi dwarf nature and the loose fruit clusters of the plant enables more or less simultaneous ripening. This would help in improving the labour productivity, especially in harvesting operations,” Mr Rau added.

“Coffee Board is also ready with a strategy to increase its seed production capacities in a phased manner,” he said adding that in five years time, they will be able to supply seeds for atleast 15,000 hectare per annum. Earlier, Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh released the new coffee plant variety.

“After research, performance in Indian conditions and further breeding trails and field evaluations, have enabled the institute to  bring it to the stage of releasing  it for commercial exploitation,” Mr Rau said.