Coffee plantation

In 1914, two European immigrants, Karen Blixen and her husband, established a coffee plantation outside of Nairobi in what is now Kenya. Conditions seemed perfect for coffee, as both the altitude and latitude closely matched that of Colombia, a highly successful coffee-growing country. Nevertheless, the coffee plants withered and eventually died, because the soil in that part of Kenya is too acidic for coffee plants to flourish. Blixen eventually became famous as the author of Out of Africa, which was made into an Oscar-winning movie. 

Visweswariah, K., Jayaram, M., Venkataramaiah, G. H., Investigations on BHC residues in drinking water from coffee plantations and coffee beans, J. Coffee Res., 3, 96, 1973. (CA84 146057e)... 

In 1979, we decided to extend our studies to one of the agroecosystems of greater Importance in Mexico the coffee plantations. These studies were realized within the Program of Agroecosystems at the-Institute Nacional de Investigaciones sobre Recursos Bioticos. We worked at the coffee plantations in Coatepec, Veracruz, which are characterized by the presence of shade trees which resemble the structure of the deciduous temperate forests, with three well defined strata the herbaceous layer, the shrub layer represented by coffee plants and the tree layer. The main objective of this study was to assess the allelopathic interactions among the species that constitute this community, in particular the coffee plants (19). 

Figure 3 shows the effect of the soil extracts from the coffee plantation. Waller et al. mention that these effects might be explained by the accumulation of caffeine and other alkaloids in soil in old coffee plantations (20). 

Fig 1. Salvia divinorum flowering in a coffee plantation on Cerro Quemado, Oaxaca (2 Mar 1980). Plant height 1 m. Fig. 

Ilex paraguayensis (mate) (Aquifoliaceae), Coffea arabica, Coffea spp. (coffee) (Rubiaceae) [coffee bean], Paullinia cupana (guarana) (Sapindaceae), Cola acuminata (cola) (Sterculiaceae) [seed], Camellia sinensis (tea) (Theaceae) [leaf] African slave labour especially for Brazil coffee plantations plus cotton, sugar plantations in the Americas - about 13 million kidnapped transported to the Americas... 

One of the most troublesome pests in Brazilian coffee plantations is the Coffee leaf miner moth Leucoptera cojfeella) (Fig. 8.81). In 1988, Wittko Francke recognised that the main component of the sex attractant of females is 5,9-di-methylpentadecane. [188]... 

Narahari SR, Srinivas CR, Kelkar SK (1990) LE like erythema 319. and periungual telangiectasia among coffee plantation workers. Contact Dermatitis 22 296-297... 

Coffee plants are cultivated in more than 80 countries around the world, with 70% being produced by smallholder farmers (De Los Santos-Briones Hemfindez-Sotomayor, 2006). More than lOOmillion people in the coffee-growing areas worldwide derive their income directly or indirectly from coffee production (Mishra Slater, 2012). Brazil is the largest producer and exporter of C. arabica (ABIC, 2010 Silva et al., 2013), followed by Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela, Indonesia, Ethiopia, India and Mexico. Coffee plantations eover about 10.6 million ha of land, mostly in the tropics (Clay, 2004), and the coffee trade has an annual turnover of close to 10 billion US, making it the second most important commodity traded in the world next to petroleum (Silva et al., 2013). 

Fig. C-52, Coffee plantation in Brazil. (Courtesy, Field Museum of Natural...

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