As Climate Change Threatens Traditional Farming, Finnish Researchers Produce Coffee From Cell Cultures

Coffee illustration. (Unsplash/Mike Kenneally)

JAKARTA - Being one of the favorite drinks and has even become part of a lifestyle, who doesn't know coffee. However, the current climate change threatens various sectors of life, including traditional coffee plantations.

The latest and hopefully one of the answers to the threat to traditional coffee farming, Finnish scientists say they have produced coffee from cell culture with an aroma and taste that resembles the original.

The VTT Finland Technical Research Center may have found a more sustainable alternative, to grow coffee beans by floating cell cultures in a bio-reactor filled with a nutrient medium used to make various animal and plant products.

Heikki Aisala, the VTT researcher responsible for evaluating the process, said a cellular cup of coffee may not yet pass standard taste tests, but it has a lot of potential for a billion-dollar global industry.

"It's not like 100% of course. It tastes like a combination of different types of coffee. We don't have commercial varieties yet, but it definitely resembles coffee today," said Aisala, quoting Reuters on October 14.

Ilustrasi bubuk kopi. (Unsplash/Zarak Khan)

Meanwhile, VTT Research Team Leader Heiko Rischer, said laboratory-grown cell cultures offer a more sustainable way to make coffee, considering that due to high demand, countries are devoting more land to growing coffee beans, which leads to deforestation.

Rischer said the environmental benefits of lab-grown coffee include reduced use of pesticides, fertilizers and less need to ship coffee beans long distances to market.

In Europe, laboratory-grown coffee needs to be approved as a 'new food' before it is marketed.

But will discriminatory coffee lovers drink it? A barista at a Helsinki coffee shop named Satu thought so, interested in trying it.

"I think one day we will be like that because all-natural sources of coffee are disappearing, so we have to move together," he said.

"If it tastes good and the aroma is coffee-based, so why not? I think it's possible," continued Satu.