Big if true. Coffee is one of the world's most traded commodities by value, and the sourcing ethics are often pretty shaky.<p>I think it's sort of funny that they called out the flavor as tasting like "ordinary coffee," since people in my experience are extremely fussy about their brew.<p>By using bioreactor output, they're starting with something like a powder of plant cells, and finding a way to roast it -- this seems like it would create quite a different result to whole-bean roasting, I am very curious what kind of parameters they will have to adjust with the coffee cells (genetic modification to increase certain alkaloids, oils, etc?) and roasting process.<p>edit: I think it's extremely funny that my comment about people being fussy about coffee has inspired a whole series of replies with opinions about coffee, as well as opinions of other people's opinions
> this project has been part of our overall endeavor to develop the biotechnological production of daily and familiar commodities that are conventionally produced by agriculture.<p>I'm afraid I have to call BS. The nutrient medium used to feed the cell cultures will contain glucose or sucrose most likely from industrially-grown corn or sugarcane as a carbon source and other nutrients.<p>I.e. in this case biotech isn't getting rid of an agricultural production process and magically replacing it with something sustainable - it's simply shifting the agricultural supply chain more upstream and out of view.<p>Could it still be more sustainable compared to traditional coffee growing? I doubt it very much given all the input required to run commercial-scale bioreactors. Those things are energy intensive, produce waste water, and require complex nutrient broths and sterility. If you're claiming sustainability benefits in such a fuzzy situation, at least have an LCA to back up the claims.<p>What about commercial feasibility? Extremely unlikely. Most if not all of the dealbreakers recently outlined in the context of commercial-scale lab-grown meat will apply here too [0].<p>But perhaps they can bioengineer some novel coffee characteristics unobtainable otherwise and sell it for $500 a cup.<p>[0] <a href="https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/" rel="nofollow">https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca...</a>
You have to laugh at the obligatory time-to-market estimates in these lab-grown food articles: "I estimate we are only four years away from ramping up production and having regulatory approval in place."<p>It would be interesting to see what estimate was provided in the 1974 article referenced in the piece.
I've recently started making dandelion coffee, which is prepared by chopping up the roots and roasting them. It tastes similar to coffee. It has nutty, roasty and flowery flavors. I'd say it's less complex than a quality roasted coffee, but it has a nice flavor. It doesn't have any unpleasant flavor like really cheap coffees (Maxwell House, Chase and Sanborn, Folgers, etc). I think if you gave most people this and told them it was coffee, they wouldn't argue with you.
I don't think that growing coffee from cells will be scalable. It suffers the same problems that the cultured meat industry suffers.<p>Ultimately, the most cost-effective (energy and scalability-wise) production method is synthesizing the aromatic molecules directly without going through cell cultures.
The paper referenced was written in 1974 and concludes with "The typical aromatic characteristics of roasted coffee can be obtained from roasted coffee cells which have been derived from cultures maintained in active culture at least one year. Cell populations eventually appear to lose their ability to produce coffee precursors. The reason for this coffee culture roasting aroma instability is unknown although one obvious explanation could be cell selection from an initial possible heterogeneous cell population..."<p>I wonder what changes have been made in this iteration of research or if there has even been any improvement.
I'm curious about several things:<p>- does this process require expensive equipment ?<p>- I assume you can apply this process to other cells/substances - cocoa ? coca ? tobacco ? oranges ? potatoes ?<p>- if equipment became cheaper, could we envision people having a device for cellular agriculture at home?
It would be more sustainable if the poor countries that grow coffee would also be the ones that profit from it.
As it is the big coffee factories are all in the rich West.
Funny it is Finland to come up with this. Since they are known for having god-awful coffee: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9bqiil/macrons_reaction_to_finnish_coffee/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9bqiil/macrons_reac...</a>
This is not that surprising. Most of the psychoactive Harmala alkaloids in coffee are formed during roasting; typically by pyrolytic breakdown and cyclization of tryptophan. So, naturally, if the psychoactive effects are the same, the taste will be perceived as the same.