64 years ago, the agronomist Gustavo Buonaffina Parra discovered in the municipality of Caripe, also known as the "Garden of the Venezuelan East", due to the plant exuberance of its territory, a unique variety of coffee, the Caripe Hybrid.
This coffee is the result of the natural cross between the red Typica variety and red Bourbon and despite its excellent quality, it continues to be a very little known coffee. To promote its dissemination, the first step is to scientifically corroborate the hypotheses about its genetics, and once this has been achieved, its promoters intend to direct their efforts to obtain a Denomination of Origin. With all this they hope to lay the foundations to position the quality of the Caripe Hybrid in differentiated and specialty markets and thus continue optimizing the production of this coffee, unique in all of Venezuela. After the project we found the family of the discoverer, who at 92 years old continues to be in love with this coffee.
In March 1955, I had the happiness of arriving in Caripe, a beautiful valley in eastern Venezuela located 800 meters above sea level, with a delicious climate where coffee trees grew under the shelter of a lush forest and orchids adorned the guamos and bucares with their flowers.
I came from Brazil, where I received the title of Agronomic Engineer at the University of Sao Paulo and did my internship at the Agronomic Institute of Campinas, in whose research center I dedicated myself especially to studying the genoplasm bank, made up of more than 100 varieties of coffee trees from various countries.
Upon returning to my country, I was appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Breeding, head of the recently created coffee nucleus No. 5 based in Caripe, an organization that aimed to provide technical assistance to coffee growers in the states of Monagas, Sucre and Anzoátegui.
In these territories there were many coffee farms planted with different varieties and without further demarcation between them. According to data from the geographer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt collected in his work Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, in 1799, during his stay in Caripe, he had found some coffee trees in the vicinity of the convent that the Aragonese Capuchins had in the area and since then coffee production had continued to have a presence in the valley.
THE DISCOVERY
It was a year after my arrival in Caripe, in 1956, that after making multiple visits to different farms in the region, I identified some coffee trees that, due to their characteristics, were different from the varieties I had first met in Brazil, and later on my visits to Costa Rica and the Chinchiná Experimental Station in Colombia. It was something unprecedented and of great importance for the region.
This finding led me to think about the need to initiate a detailed study on the behavior of these particular coffee trees. And with that objective we selected 100 specimens distributed in farms with different altitudes above sea level and different management conditions.
For three years a production record of each specimen was kept, as well as other agronomic and morphological characteristics: size of the adult plant, adaptability to the environment, rusticity, vegetative growth, susceptibility to attack by pests and diseases, distance between nodes of primary branches. and angle of insertion between these and the main stem.
The average production of three crops of the selected plants significantly surpassed those of the Typica variety, predominant in the region, where Bourbon, Catui, Caturra and Mundo Nuevo coffees are also grown.
NATURAL CROSSING
After analyzing the results of the preliminary study carried out with the selected coffee trees, I was able to determine that the cultivar in question had its origin in a natural cross between the Typica red variety and Bourbon red, since there are specimens that segregate indifferently towards one of the parents. The leaves of the Caripe hybrid, for example, are more elliptical than Typica, and the olive green color of its terminal leaves is characteristic of Bourbon coffee, although the flexibility of the main stem, an attribute that facilitates harvesting, differentiates it from the latter. since Bourbon coffee trees have a more rigid stem.
In accordance with all these morphological characteristics of the studied plants, I also reached a second conclusion, and that is that these specimens had the same origin as the Brazilian coffee variety known as Mundo Novo, another natural cross between Typica and Bourbon coffee trees. The big difference, however, was that when Mundo Novo was identified in Brazil, it had a serious defect, it had a high percentage of vain grains. This anomaly was later eliminated by being subjected to genetic improvement programs. On the other hand, our cultivar did not naturally present that defect that directly affects the yield of the variety. In honor of the people who saw it born, I baptized the new coffee with the name of Híbrido Caripe and the observations and results obtained on it were presented in a work of promotion to the university ladder of the Universidad de Oriente in my capacity as professor of the chair of coffee in that house of studies.
Currently, the production of the Caripe Hybrid is limited to the area where it was born. Most of it is in the hands of small coffee growers with plots of 3 to 4 hectares, located between 800 m.a.s.l. and 1,300 m.s.n.m. where the ideal circumstances for the cultivation of this coffee occur: clay-sandy soils rich in organic matter, pH of 6.5, and an average temperature of 21 ° C.
On the farms, served with their own resources that have been greatly diminished over time and particularly at this time, coffee growers apply traditional cultivation techniques, currently the average yield is 7 quintals per hectare, at planting densities of 2,000 plants per hectare.
A FRAGANT, SWEET AND SILKY COFFEE
In our town of Caripe, the traditional process has been wet and dry processing, although recently some initiatives that are applying drying in African beds and carrying out tests with both Natural and Natural processes have begun to emerge from the hands of new generations of coffee growers. Honey, as well as longer controlled fermentations. The objective is to continue optimizing the quality of this coffee, that already now, in tasting tests recently carried out in Indianapolis, the Caripe Hybrid has obtained a high sensory score of 83.74 points, standing out as a very fragrant and very sweet coffee, with medium-low citric acidity; silky and light body and pleasant descriptors of chocolate, brown sugar or cane honey.
CARIPE HYBRID DISCLOSURE
Despite these good qualities, however, our Hybrid is little known and that is why our current objective is to stimulate its knowledge and dissemination. It is in this sense that we have planned a genetic study with the participation of a Venezuelan university in order to deepen the scientific aspects that at the time I studied this coffee could not be carried out and in this way determine its genetic condition as an original hybrid. of our territory. We are convinced that this would constitute a scientific contribution as a discovery for the world of coffee and would also contribute to achieving a denomination of origin of its own, since the Caripe Hybrid is spread in all the farms of this municipality, so important in the Venezuelan coffee industry .
For the moment, unfortunately, the current conditions in our country make it very difficult for the project to be carried out, since part of it depends on many factors beyond our reach. To mention some, for example, to say that public universities have only been approved 21% of the budget requests for their operation for the remainder of this year and 2021 and this is causing genetics laboratories to be almost paralyzed . This, however, is not going to be a reason to stop working in favor of the dissemination of the Caripe Hybrid, with which we seek to be a dynamic element of the coffee activity in our municipality by providing a product with high quality of origin that can become an important reference for the differentiated and specialty coffee markets. Let's wake up the sleeping giant!
Gustavo Buonaffina Parra - Agronomist Engineer
Taken from the magazine Forum Cafe Barcelona, Spain
