Unlocking the Potential of Stenophylla Coffee

Climate change and extreme weather conditions continue to impact coffee crops around the world, posing challenges to the commercial production of Arabica and Robusta. In the search for more climate-resilient species, Coffea stenophylla – a wild coffee native to West Africa – has emerged as a promising candidate. 

Stenophylla was thought to be extinct until several wild populations were identified in Sierra Leone in 2018 by Dr Jeremy Haggar, Professor of Agroecology at the University of Greenwich, Dr Aaron Davis, Senior Research leader of Crops & Global Change at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Daniel Sarmu from Coffee Culture Sierra Leone and colleagues from the NGO Welthungerhilfe. The team are now working with local communities to grow and study stenophylla and develop a strategy for reestablishing the species in Sierra Leone. 

Sucafina is proud to be supporting this five-year project. Two years in, the work is already providing fundamental information about how best to cultivate stenophylla and could eventually pave the way to commercializing its production, while supporting coffee communities in Sierra Leone. 

“It’s becoming clearer by the day that building a more climate-resilient coffee supply chain is no longer a ‘nice to have’ – it’s a necessity. That’s why stenophylla is an exciting prospect, and why Sucafina is investing in this research in Sierra Leone to unlock its potential,” says Dave Behrends, Managing Partner & Head of Trading at Sucafina. 

Climate Resilience x Quality = Stenophylla: A New Equation for Coffee? 

“What makes stenophylla so compelling is that it has a flavor profile like Arabica and yet it can be grown at much lower elevations – and at substantially higher temperatures,” Dr Davis explains. “And unlike Robusta, stenophylla can withstand a lengthy dry season.” 

Starting with 300 wild stenophylla plants, the team has been propagating seedlings in a community nursery in eastern Sierra Leone before planting them, when ready, in trial plots to see how they perform under different conditions. By the end of 2023, about 5,600 seedlings had been planted across eight trial plots. Impressively, 80% survived an intense heatwave in early 2024, with temperatures hitting 40°C or higher for 59 days straight.  

“Stenophylla is a tough coffee,” Dr Davis notes. “We fully expected all the stenophylla trials to be devastated by drought, as we have no access to irrigation, but only the plots with no shade suffered significant mortality; the shaded plots had over 80% survival.” 

So far, moderate shade appears to offer the best balance between survival and growth. While trial plots with no shade cover experienced severe losses, too much shade can slow plant growth. 

Partnering with Coffee Communities in Sierra Leone 

In 2021 the team established a stenophylla community nursery on two hectares of land provided by the community. Maintained by Coffee Culture Sierra Leone, alongside local women and young people employed to plant and tend to the seedlings, the nursery is helping to ensure a steady stream of seedlings to produce plants for future trials. More than 5,000 plants are in production for 2025, most of which will be used to infill and extend the community plantation.  

The community nursery provides an income and benefits farmers in other ways, including training on best practices for stenophylla cultivation, while avoiding the financial risks from growing an unknown species. Revitalizing stenophylla production in Sierra Leone could help farmers to increase their income and reduce farming inputs. 

Beyond the research, the project is also investing in community infrastructure by improving access to clean water and sanitation facilities. A community well and toilet have been completed, with a second well and toilet now under construction. These enhancements reflect the project’s broader aim of ensuring that research into stenophylla goes hand in hand with tangible benefits for producer communities. 

Cultivating Resilience: Broadening Stenophylla’s Potential 

While the commercial potential of stenophylla remains a big question (harvesting of the first plantings is expected to happen this year), research is providing clues into how this potential might be unlocked. One focus is on trials to graft stenophylla onto excelsa (Coffea dewevrei) rootstock.  

“We’re hoping that the robust and deep-rooted excelsa rootstock will increase the growth, shorten the time from seed to first flowering and perhaps even improve the yield for stenophylla,” Dr Davis explains. 

The grafting trials are progressing well: all of the 200 plants grafted in June 2024 have taken and were planted out in October 2024. As the trial continues, 230 excelsa seedlings are ready for planting in 2025, with a further 1,000 seedlings in production for grafting in 2025. 

It is early days, and as a newly cultivated species, there is a lot to learn about how best to grow stenophylla, with many questions still to address, including around the best processing methods, export and market value. 

 
What’s Next for Stenophylla Research? 

This year, the team will be keeping an eye out for the stenophylla plants’ first flowering and fruit production. Alongside producing more seedlings, they’ll also be improving plant agronomy in the trial plots and monitoring the success of the grafted plants. Another focus will be analyzing results from trials implemented by Welthungerhilfe in 2024 to assess how stenophylla responds to different types and amounts of fertilizer. 

“Additionally, our community-based partner, Coffee Culture Sierra Leone, will start to provide at cost small lots of about 200 plants for farmers and institutions in Sierra Leone to trial,” says Dr Haggar. “The aim is for the nursery to become self-funding over the coming two years, while also building experience of stenophylla production among local organizations.”  

As well as representing a key asset for coffee breeding and agroecology, stenophylla is also adding to understanding of coffee sensory science through further evaluations carried out in 2024, Dr Davis adds. “The flavor of stenophylla continues to surprise and excite cuppers and tasters. Sensory comparisons to the high-elevation Bourbon Arabica are a recurring theme.” 

As we learn more about how to cultivate and potentially scale stenophylla production, the hope is that this unique species could play a key role in ensuring a sustainable future for coffee farming. And it might, one day, offer coffee buyers a new and resilient addition to their sourcing portfolio. 

Want to learn more about stenophylla coffee and the research into revitalizing its production in Sierra Leone? Reach out to your trader. Please be aware, however, that stenophylla seeds/seedlings are not being made available at this time, and export of any planting material would require approval of the Sierra Leonean government.