"IH-90": Coffee Variety or Star Wars Character?

One of the wonderful things about coffee is that coffee-producing countries create agricultural promotion organizations, whose job it is to help the coffee industry in that country flourish.  In Honduras, the organization is called the Instituto Hondureño del Café, aka IHCAFE.  Among many other things, IHCAFE works on coffee breeding, and in the 1980s developed a variety called IH-90, aka IHCAFE-90.  It is apparently a Catimor type, meaning that it has both Caturra (which is a dwarf Bourbon) and Variety Timor (which is an Arabica-Robusta hybrid) in its lineage. The Caturra gives it small, compact stature and high productivity, and the Timor gives it disease resistance. Great, right? Well, the problem is of course that Catimor types have a tendency to lower quality.  Once again, the tension between cup quality and farmer benefits rears its head. 

IH-90 from Tim Wendelboe

Coffee buyers have a prejudice against varieties like IH-90, on account of the quality thing. However, disease-resistant Catimors of this kind have been important in stemming the spread of Rust disease this year. It's important to recognize the important positive effect organizations like IHCAFE and the varieties they produce have, at the same time that we advocate for better-tasting AND disease resistant AND highly productive varieties.