Decaf Coffee Find Percolates Into a Big-Time Spat

LONDON (Reuters) - The discovery of a coffee plant with naturally low caffeine and high sales potential to coffee lovers around the world has sparked an international tug of war over its ownership, legal and agricultural experts said.

In an industry which the International Coffee Organization (ICO) estimated in 2002 generated some $70 billion in global retail sales, the stakes are high as Brazil and Ethiopia spar over the ownership of the plant found growing in Ethiopian forests by a Brazilian scientist.

International conventions regulating the ownership of indigenous plants seem to favor Ethiopia, one expert said, but the plant samples were collected before the rules came into force.

"The Convention is not retroactive, so the Brazilian may not be bound by it," the legal source said late on Monday.

Paulo Mazzafera of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil announced his discovery of the first naturally decaffeinated arabica plant in the prestigious science journal Nature last month.

Ethiopian officials reacted angrily, saying they had not been consulted and urging Mazzafera to explain under what conditions he was able to take 6,000 coffee specimens from Ethiopia in the 1980s.

HOPING FOR MUTUAL AGREEMENT

Ethiopia is hoping for a mutually agreeable solution.

"We feel that it is possible for us to come up with a *win-win' solution that would benefit both Ethiopia and Brazil," Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told Reuters in Addis Ababa earlier this month.

A spokesman for the ICO, the largest inter-governmental group representing producing and consuming countries, declined comment.

Mazzafera was not immediately available but experts say his find could have a significant impact on the world coffee market.

"Naturally occurring decaffeinated coffee, rather than something occurring through a chemical process, could provide an important boost to coffee consumption," David Hallam, chief of the tropical and horticultural products service of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told Reuters from FAO's Rome headquarters.

Roger Cook, director of the UK-based Coffee Science Information Center, told Reuters that based on Mazzafera's data, it seems that any commercially viable plant would not be produced for some time, as a normal coffee bush takes five years to bear fruit.

Mazzafera told Nature that the decaf arabica plant has not been grown commercially so he and his colleagues do not know how productive it will be.

But they plan to test productivity with a view to developing the crop.

Decaffeinated coffee now accounts for about 10 percent of world consumption. Arabica coffee is the most cultivated and consumed coffee, and represents about 70 percent of the world's coffee production.

Resolution of ownership rights to the discovery will be vital to unlock what food experts say is potentially an important new market as the availability of natural coffee with low caffeine content would remove any perceived health concerns over caffeine.

Decaffeination processes can involve treating green coffee beans with a chemical solvent, then removing the caffeine-laden solvent from the beans.

Legal and agriculture experts said that resolving the wrangle surrounding the decaf coffee find could help settle the issue of compensation for developing countries for development of plant genetic resources found growing in their back yards by scientists from rich countries.

Coffee grown throughout the world originated in the misty forested highlands of south-western Ethiopia in a region known as Kaffa, which is said to give its name to the plant.