Wake up and smell the ‘sustainable’ coffee produced in Finnish lab
Due to the threat posed by climate change to traditional coffee farming,
Finnish researchers claim to have created coffee from cell cultures with an aroma and taste similar to that of the real thing.
The Finnish VTT Technical Research Centre may have discovered a more sustainable method of growing coffee beans by floating cell cultures in bioreactors filled with a nutrient medium used to manufacture a variety of animal and plant-based products.
Heikki Aisala, the VTT researcher in charge of evaluating the process, said that while cups of cellular coffee are unlikely to pass standard taste tests just yet, they do have the potential to grow into a multibillion-dollar global industry.
“Of course, not entirely. It has the flavour of a blend of various coffees. We are not yet at that point with the commercial variety, but it does bear a strong resemblance to coffee at the moment “Aisala stated.
Heiko Rischer, head of the VTT Research Team, said lab-grown cell cultures offered a more sustainable method of producing coffee, given that countries were devoting ever larger tracts of land to growing coffee beans due to high demand, resulting in deforestation.
