What Makes the Arara and Topazio Coffee Variety Tree Special?

The 2024 Brazil Cup of Excellence results are out, marking 25 years of the competition in Brazil. Winners were split into Natural, Washed & Honey, and Experimental categories, and rare cultivars such as Arara and Topazio drew attention. Arara is a cross between Yellow Catuai and Obata, first found in 1988 by a researcher at the Campinas Agronomic Institute.

The Arara coffee variety tree was spotted as a compact plant bearing yellow fruit, showing resistance to pests and leaf rust with high productivity, so its seeds were sent for further study. The Cup of Excellence was founded in 1999 by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence to give farmers recognition and higher income for quality lots through competitions and auctions.

The Cup of Excellence (COE), one of the world's most authoritative specialty coffee competitions, was founded in 1999 by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) to provide a platform for showcasing high-quality coffee from producing countries and help coffee farmers earn higher incomes. The 2024 Brazil COE competition coincided with the 25th anniversary of the event's establishment in Brazil, and the results have been officially announced. This year's competition was once again divided into three categories: Natural, Washed & Honey, and Experimental. Among the winning varieties, rare cultivars such as Arará and Topázio emerged, attracting widespread attention. This article will take you through an in-depth look at the origins and characteristics of these two varieties and their performance in the COE competition, while also highlighting related product information recommended by Front Street Coffee.

The Cup of Excellence (COE) is one of the world's most renowned and authoritative specialty coffee competitions, founded in 1999 by the non-profit organization Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE). It holds coffee competitions and auctions in multiple coffee-producing countries worldwide, aiming to help local coffee farmers gain recognition and higher income for their high-quality coffee.

The competition was first held in Brazil, and this year's 2024 Cup of Excellence competition in Brazil marks the 25th anniversary of COE in Brazil. Recently, the results of the competition have been announced. This year, it was again divided into three categories: Natural, Washed + Honey, and Experimental.

Natural Category

Washed + Honey Category

Experimental Category

In this year's Brazil COE competition, the winning varieties differed from those of other coffee-producing countries, with some relatively rare coffee varieties appearing, such as Arara and Topazio. Today, let's get to know what these varieties are.

Arara

The Arara variety has a complex lineage, being a cross between Yellow Catuai and Obatã. According to records, it was first discovered in 1988 by a researcher at the Campinas Agronomic Institute (IAC) in Brazil, when a relatively compact coffee tree was found on a farm, bearing yellow fruit. Compared with the red-fruited variety next to it, it showed resistance to pests and leaf rust, while also being highly productive.

Thus, this batch of seeds was sent to a variety selection project farm of the Fundação Procafé in Varginha, Minas, followed by 15 years of breeding and cultivation research, and was officially released to farmers in 2012.

Currently, because Arara has the lineage of Catuai and Obatã, the Arara fruit is yellow, with characteristics such as drought tolerance, leaf rust resistance, compact tree shape, dense fruiting, high yield, and high quality, and it easily adapts to different growing environments, making it favored by farmers. In recent years, it has gradually made a name for itself in some international coffee competitions. This variety appeared in the Brazil COE in 2018, though it ranked relatively low. It was not until this year's COE that Arara won first place in the Experimental category, and it also achieved impressive results in the other processing categories.

Topázio

Topázio is a variety developed by the Campinas Agronomic Institute (IAC) in Brazil between the 1960s and 1970s. It is an artificially selected variety created by crossing the Mundo Novo variety with Catuai, and then backcrossing the hybrid offspring with Catuai.

The purpose of backcrossing is to leverage the superior traits of the hybrid, using backcrossing between the hybrid and one of the parents to allow the parent's traits to be more stably inherited by the offspring. The Topázio variety was crossed with Catuai twice during the hybridization process, so Topázio is similar to Catuai in coffee tree shape and coffee quality, with a small plant and high yield. In addition, Topázio has a longer life cycle and produces yellow fruit.

This variety appeared on the Brazil COE list in 2018, when it only ranked 13th. By the 2024 COE, it won the championship in the Natural + Honey category with a score of 91.93.

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.