ABSTRACT
Ethiopia is the birth place of coffee. The name coffee is taken from the name of an administrative region called ‘Kaffa’, where coffee was discovered and grows wild (Lewis 1953: 48–9). Coffee was taken from Ethiopia to Yemen, 2 from Yemen through Arabia in the 16th century to Egypt and Syria, then to Turkey, and from Turkey to Europe (Lewis 1953: 49). The Europeans then took coffee and introduced it in their colonies. Ethiopia is not only the place of origin for coffee, but also possesses 99.8 per cent of Arabica's genetic diversity, which enables the country to produce different coffee types with vast range of inherent characteristics that make the coffee types unique and distinctive. The Arabica coffee that is produced by other countries in the world is derived from about 4–5 gene bases, taken from Ethiopia (Kotcha 2007: 4). The rich genetic resource pool is attributed to the different coffee growing agro-ecological zones and natural factors such as rainfall, shade, altitude, climate and soil. Coffee grows in almost all administrative regions of Ethiopia under different conditions ranging from the semi-savanna climatic condition of the Gambela plain to the continuously wet forest zone of the south western region. Ethiopia's genetic resources are unique and have special values in many respects. For example, Arabica is 95 per cent self-pollinating and in breeding as opposed to Robusta, which is cross pollinating (Kotcha 2007: 4). Moreover, the value of the huge genetic resource pool of the country could also be expressed in terms of its use to produce high yield and disease resistant varieties as well as preferred traits such as low caffeine or caffeine-free coffee.
