coffee research

Is coffee good or bad for your health?

Although early studies of coffee suggested that it could lead to health problems, recent research provides strong evidence that drinking coffee actually has a variety of health benefits.

“The overall evidence has been pretty convincing that coffee has been more healthful than harmful in terms of health outcomes,” said Frank Hu , chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in an April 5, 2021, article in Discover. “For most people, moderate coffee consumption can be incorporated into a healthy diet.”

Hu said that moderate coffee intake—about 2–5 cups a day—is linked to a lower likelihood of type 2 diabetes , heart disease , liver and endometrial cancers, Parkinson’s disease, and depression . It’s even possible that people who drink coffee can reduce their risk of early death.

Early research linked coffee to diseases ranging from heart disease and asthma . But Hu noted that many participants in those studies also smoked, which may have led researchers to think that coffee was responsible for the adverse effects that are now linked with cigarettes . He added that anything people consume a lot of tends to come under scrutiny. “In the past, I think a lot of people thought, ‘Oh, coffee’s so delicious, there must be something bad about coffee,’” he said. “So I think the good news is that [for] most people, coffee actually confers some health benefits.”

Certain groups should be careful about drinking coffee, according to the article. Not much is known about the effects of coffee on children , and caffeine could be harmful to pregnancies . Too much caffeine can also cause anxiety in people with panic or anxiety disorders.

For those who drink coffee, experts suggest brewing it with a paper filter, because unfiltered coffee is associated with higher rates of early death, and can contain compounds that raise levels of LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol. They also advise not going overboard with added cream or sugar.

Read the Discover article: Is Coffee Good for You or Not?

Moderate coffee, tea consumption can be part of healthy lifestyle for most (Harvard Chan School news)

Coffee can be beneficial part of a healthy diet (Harvard Chan School news)

Coffee (The Nutrition Source)

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The Impact of Caffeine and Coffee on Human Health

Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world and is also a major source of caffeine for most populations [ 1 ]. This special issue of Nutrients , “The Impact of Caffeine and Coffee on Human Health” contains nine reviews and 10 original publications of timely human research investigating coffee and caffeine habits and the impact of coffee and caffeine intake on various diseases, conditions, and performance traits.

With increasing interest in the role of coffee in health, general knowledge of population consumption patterns and within the context of the full diet is important for both research and public health. Reyes and Cornelis [ 1 ] used 2017 country-level volume sales (proxy for consumption) of caffeine-containing beverages (CCBs) to demonstrate that coffee and tea remain the leading CCBs consumed around the world. In a large coordinated effort spanning 10 European countries, Landais et al. [ 2 ] quantified self-reported coffee and tea intakes and assessed their contribution to the intakes of selected nutrients in adults where variation in consumption was mostly driven by geographical region. Overall, coffee and tea contributed to less than 10% of the energy intake. However, the greatest contribution to total sugar intake was observed in Southern Europe (up to ~20%). These works not only emphasize the wide prevalence of coffee and tea drinking, but also the need for data on coffee and tea additives in epidemiological studies of these beverages in certain countries as they may offset any potential benefits these beverages have on health.

Doepker et al. [ 3 ] provided a user-friendly synopsis of their systematic review [ 4 ] of caffeine safety, which concluded that caffeine doses (400 mg/day for healthy adults, for example) previously determined in 2003 [ 5 ] as not to be associated with adverse effects, remained generally appropriate despite new research conducted since then. Further concerning caffeine safety is the systematic review of caffeine-related deaths by Capelletti et al. [ 6 ]. Suicide, accidental, and intentional poisoning were the most common causes of death and most cases involved infants, psychiatric patients, and athletes. Both Doepker et al. [ 3 ] and Capelletti et al. [ 6 ] alluded to the increasing interest in the area of between-person sensitivity resulting from environmental and genetic factors, of which the latter is a topic of additional papers in this special issue and thus reiterates this interest.

Advancements in high-throughput analyses of the human genome, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome have presented coffee researchers with an unprecedented opportunity to optimize their research approach while acquiring mechanistic and causal insight to their observed associations [ 7 ]. Three timely reviews [ 8 , 9 , 10 ] and an original report [ 11 ] addressed the topic of human genetics and coffee and caffeine consumption. Interest in this area received a boost by the success of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which identified multiple genetic variants associated with habitual coffee and caffeine consumption as discussed by Cornelis and Munafo [ 8 ] in their review of Mendelian randomization (MR) studies on coffee and caffeine consumption. MR is a technique that uses genetic variants as instrumental variables to assess whether an observational association between a risk factor (i.e., coffee) and an outcome aligns with a causal effect. The application of this approach to coffee and health is growing, but has important statistical and conceptual challenges that warrant consideration in the interpretation of the results. Southward et al. [ 9 ] and Fulton et al. [ 10 ] reviewed the impact of genetics on physiological responses to caffeine. Both emphasized a current clinical interest limited to CYP1A2 and ADORA2A variations, suggesting opportunities to expand this research to more recent loci identified by GWAS. Despite the advancements in integrating genetics into clinical trials of caffeine, such designs remain susceptible to limitations [ 9 , 10 , 12 , 13 ]. Some of these limitations were further highlighted by Shabir et al. [ 14 ] in their critical review on the impact of caffeine expectancies on sport, exercise, and cognitive performance. Interestingly, the original findings from a randomized controlled trial of regular coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and placebo suggested the stimulant activity of coffee beyond its caffeine content, raising issues with the use of decaffeinated coffee as a placebo [ 15 ].

The impact of coffee intake on gene expression and the lipidome were investigated by Barnung et al. [ 16 ] and Kuang et al. [ 17 ], respectively. Barnung et al. [ 16 ] reported on the results from a population-based whole-blood gene expression analysis of coffee consumption that pointed to metabolic, immune, and inflammation pathways. Using samples from a controlled trial of coffee intake, Kuang et al. [ 17 ] reported that coffee intake led to lower levels of specific lysophosphatidylcholines. These two reports provide both novel and confirmatory insight into mechanisms by which coffee might be impacting health and further demonstrate the power of high-throughput omic technologies in the nutrition field.

Heavy coffee and caffeine intake continue to be seen as potentially harmful on pregnancy outcomes [ 18 ]. Leviton [ 19 ] discussed the biases inherent in studies of coffee consumption during pregnancy and argued that all of the reports of detrimental effects of coffee could be explained by one or more of these biases. The impact of dietary caffeine intake on assisted reproduction technique (ART) outcomes has also garnered interest. An original report by Ricci et al. [ 20 ] in this special issue found no relationship between the caffeine intake of subfertile couples and negative ART outcomes.

Van Dijk et al. [ 21 ] reviewed the effects of caffeine on myocardial blood flow, which support a significant and clinically relevant influence of recent caffeine intake on cardiac perfusion measurements during adenosine and dipyridamole induced hyperemia. Original observational reports on the association between habitual coffee consumption and liver fibrosis [ 22 ], depression [ 23 ], hearing [ 24 ], and cognition indices [ 25 ] have extended the research in these areas to new populations.

Finally, given the widespread availability of caffeine in the diet and the increasing public and scientific interest in the potential health consequences of habitual caffeine intake, Reyes and Cornelis [ 1 ] assessed how current caffeine knowledge and concern has been translated into food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG) from around the world; focusing on CCBs. Several themes emerged, but in general, FBDG provided an unfavorable view of CCBs, which was rarely balanced with recent data supporting the potential benefits of specific beverage types.

This collection of original and review papers provides a useful summary of the progress on the topic of caffeine, coffee, and human health. It also points to the research needs and limitations of the study design, which should be considered going forward and when critically evaluating the research findings.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

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Newly sequenced genome reveals coffee's prehistoric origin story, and its future under climate change

by University at Buffalo

The key to growing coffee plants that can better resist climate change in the decades to come may lie in the ancient past.

Researchers co-led by the University at Buffalo have created what they say is the highest quality reference genome to date of the world's most popular coffee species, Arabica, unearthing secrets about its lineage that span millennia and continents.

Their findings , published in Nature Genetics , suggest that Coffea arabica developed more than 600,000 years ago in the forests of Ethiopia via natural mating between two other coffee species. Arabica's population waxed and waned throughout Earth's heating and cooling periods over thousands of years, the study found, before eventually being cultivated in Ethiopia and Yemen, and then spread over the globe.

"We've used genomic information in plants alive today to go back in time and paint the most accurate picture possible of Arabica's long history, as well as determine how modern cultivated varieties are related to each other," says the study's co-corresponding author, Victor Albert, Ph.D., Empire Innovation Professor in the UB Department of Biological Sciences, within the College of Arts and Sciences.

Coffee giants like Starbucks and Tim Hortons exclusively use beans from Arabica plants to brew the millions of cups of coffee they serve everyday, yet, in part due to a low genetic diversity stemming from a history of inbreeding and small population size, Arabica is susceptible to many pests and diseases and can only be cultivated in a few places in the world where pathogen threats are lower and climate conditions are more favorable.

"A detailed understanding of the origins and breeding history of contemporary varieties are crucial to developing new Arabica cultivars better adapted to climate change ," Albert says.

From their new reference genome, accomplished using cutting-edge DNA sequencing technology and advanced data science, the team was able to sequence 39 Arabica varieties and even an 18th century specimen used by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus to name the species.

The reference genome is now available in a publicly available digital database.

"While other public references for Arabica coffee do exist, the quality of our team's work is extremely high," says one of the study's co-leaders, Patrick Descombes, senior expert in genomics at Nestlé Research. "We used state-of-the-art genomics approaches—including long- and short-read high throughput DNA sequencing—to create the most advanced, complete and continuous Arabica reference genome to date."

Humanity's favorite coffee evolved without people's help

Arabica is the source of approximately 60% of the world's total coffee products, with its seeds helping millions start their day or stay up late. However, the initial crossbreeding that created it was done without any intervention from humans.

Arabica formed as a natural hybridization between Coffea canephora and Coffea eugenioides, whereupon it received two sets of chromosomes from each parent. Scientists have had a hard time pinpointing exactly when—and where—this allopolyploidization event took place, with estimates ranging everywhere from 10,000 to 1 million years ago.

To find evidence for the original event, UB researchers and their partners ran their various Arabica genomes through a computational modeling program to look for signatures of the species' foundation.

The models show three population bottlenecks during Arabica's history, with the oldest happening some 29,000 generations—or 610,000 years—ago. This suggests Arabica formed sometime before that, anywhere from 610,000 to 1 million years ago, researchers say.

"In other words, the crossbreeding that created Arabica wasn't something that humans did," Albert says. "It's pretty clear that this polyploidy event predated modern humans and the cultivation of coffee."

Coffee plants have long been thought to have developed in Ethiopia, but varieties that the team collected around the Great Rift Valley, which stretches from Southeast Africa to Asia, displayed a clear geographic split. The wild varieties studied all originated from the western side, while the cultivated varieties all originated from the eastern side closest to the Bab al-Mandab strait that separates Africa and Yemen.

That would align with evidence that coffee cultivation may have started principally in Yemen, around the 15th century. Indian monk Baba Budan is believed to have smuggled the fabled "seven seeds" out of Yemen around 1600, establishing Indian Arabica cultivars and setting the stage for coffee's global reach today.

"It looks like Yemeni coffee diversity may be the founder of all of the current major varieties," Descombes says. "Coffee is not a crop that has been heavily crossbred, such as maize or wheat, to create new varieties. People mainly chose a variety they liked and then grew it. So the varieties we have today have probably been around for a long time."

How climate impacted Arabica's population

East Africa's geoclimatic history is well documented due to research on human origins, so researchers could contrast climate events with how the wild and cultivated Arabica populations fluctuated over time.

Modeling shows a long period of low population size between 20–100,000 years ago, which roughly coincides with an extended drought and cooler climate believed to have hit the region between 40–70,000 years ago. The population then increased during the African humid period, around 6–15,000 years ago, when growth conditions were likely more beneficial.

During this same time, around 30,000 years ago, the wild varieties and the varieties that would eventually become cultivated by humans split from each other.

"They still occasionally bred with each other, but likely stopped around the end of the African humid period and the widening of the strait due to rising sea levels around 8,000 to 9,000 years ago," says Jarkko Salojärvi, assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and another co-corresponding author of work.

Low genetic diversity threatens Arabica

Cultivated Arabica is estimated to have an effective population size of only 10,000 to 50,000 individuals. Its low genetic diversity means it could be completely decimated, like the monoculture Cavendish banana, by pathogens, such as coffee leaf rust, which causes $1–2 billion in losses annually.

The reference genome was able to shed more light on how one line of Arabica varieties obtained strong resistance to the disease.

The Timor variety formed in Southeast Asia as a spontaneous hybrid between Arabica and one of its parents, Coffea canephora. Also known as Robusta and used primarily for instant coffee, this species is more resistant to disease than Arabica.

"Thus, when Robusta hybridized itself back into Arabica on Timor, it brought some of its pathogen defense genes along with it," says Albert, who also co-led sequencing of the Robusta genome in 2014 . Albert and collaborators' current work also presents a highly improved version of the Robusta genome, as well as new sequence of Arabica's other progenitor species, Coffea eugenioides.

While breeders have tried replicating this crossbreeding to boost pathogen defense, the new Arabica reference genome allowed the present researchers to pinpoint a novel region harboring members of the RPP8 resistance gene family as well as a general regulator of resistance genes, CPR1.

"These results suggest a novel target locus for potentially improving pathogen resistance in Arabica," Salojärvi says.

The genome provided other new findings as well, like which wild varieties are closest to modern, cultivated Arabica coffee. They also found that the Typica variety, an early Dutch cultivar originating from either India or Sri Lanka, is likely the parent of the Bourbon variety, principally cultivated by the French.

"Our work has not been unlike reconstructing the family tree of a very important family," Albert says.

Journal information: Nature Genetics

Provided by University at Buffalo

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Coffee and health: a review of recent human research

Affiliation.

• 1 Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA. [email protected]
• PMID: 16507475
• DOI: 10.1080/10408390500400009

Coffee is a complex mixture of chemicals that provides significant amounts of chlorogenic acid and caffeine. Unfiltered coffee is a significant source of cafestol and kahweol, which are diterpenes that have been implicated in the cholesterol-raising effects of coffee. The results of epidemiological research suggest that coffee consumption may help prevent several chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, Parkinson's disease and liver disease (cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma). Most prospective cohort studies have not found coffee consumption to be associated with significantly increased cardiovascular disease risk. However, coffee consumption is associated with increases in several cardiovascular disease risk factors, including blood pressure and plasma homocysteine. At present, there is little evidence that coffee consumption increases the risk of cancer. For adults consuming moderate amounts of coffee (3-4 cups/d providing 300-400 mg/d of caffeine), there is little evidence of health risks and some evidence of health benefits. However, some groups, including people with hypertension, children, adolescents, and the elderly, may be more vulnerable to the adverse effects of caffeine. In addition, currently available evidence suggests that it may be prudent for pregnant women to limit coffee consumption to 3 cups/d providing no more than 300 mg/d of caffeine to exclude any increased probability of spontaneous abortion or impaired fetal growth.

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• Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
• Caffeine / adverse effects
• Caffeine / poisoning
• Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / epidemiology
• Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / prevention & control
• Cardiovascular Diseases / epidemiology
• Cardiovascular Diseases / etiology
• Chlorogenic Acid
• Coffee* / adverse effects
• Coffee* / chemistry
• Colorectal Neoplasms / epidemiology
• Colorectal Neoplasms / prevention & control
• Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 / epidemiology
• Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 / prevention & control
• Glucose Intolerance
• Health Promotion
• Hip Fractures / epidemiology
• Insulin Resistance
• Liver Cirrhosis / epidemiology
• Liver Cirrhosis / prevention & control
• Liver Neoplasms / epidemiology
• Liver Neoplasms / prevention & control
• Osteoporosis / epidemiology
• Parkinson Disease / epidemiology
• Parkinson Disease / prevention & control
• Suicide Prevention

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• Nutrition and healthy eating

Does coffee offer health benefits?

While past studies hinted that coffee might have a dark side, newer research suggests that it may actually have health benefits.

Why the reversal? It's hard to look at just one aspect of diet and connect it to a health condition because so many other factors that could play a role. For example, early research on coffee didn't always take into account that heavy coffee drinkers also tended to use tobacco and be sedentary.

When newer studies adjusted for such factors, they found a possible association between coffee and decreased mortality. Coffee may offer some protection against:

• Parkinson's disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• Liver disease, including liver cancer
• Heart attack and stroke

Coffee still has potential risks, mostly due to its high caffeine content. For example, it can temporarily raise blood pressure. Women who are pregnant, trying to become pregnant or breastfeeding need to be cautious about caffeine. High intake of boiled, unfiltered coffee has been associated with mild increase in cholesterol levels.

The bottom line? Your coffee habit is probably fine and may even have some benefits. But if you have side effects from coffee, such as heartburn, nervousness or insomnia, consider cutting back.

Donald Hensrud, M.D.

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• Lieberman HR, et al. Daily patterns of caffeine intake and the association of intake with multiple sociodemographic and lifestyle factors in U.S. adults based on the NHANES 2007­2012 surveys. Journal of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 2019; doi:10.1016/j.jand.2018.08.152.
• Bordeaux B. Benefits and risks of caffeine and caffeinated beverages. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/search. Accessed Sept. 20, 2019.
• Grosso G, et al. Coffee, caffeine, and health outcomes: An umbrella review. Annual Review of Nutrition. 2019; doi:10.1146/annurev-nutr-071816-064941.
• O'Keefe JO, et al. Coffee for cardioprotection and longevity. Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases. 2018; doi:10.1016/j.pcad.2018.02.002.
• IARC Working Group on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risk to Humans. Vol. 116: Drinking coffee, mate, and very hot beverages. In: IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risk to Humans. International Agency for Research on Cancer; 2018. http://publications.iarc.fr/566. Accessed Sept. 25, 2019.
• Benefits of coffee. Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. https://www.eatright.org/health/wellness/preventing-illness/benefits-of-coffee. Accessed Sept. 25, 2019.
• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Committee Opinion No.462: Moderate caffeine consumption during Pregnancy. Obstetrics & Gynecology. 2010; doi:10.1097/AOG.0b013e3181eeb2a1. Reaffirmed 2016.
• Hensrud DD (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic. Feb. 6, 2020.
• Zhou A, et al. Long-term coffee consumption, caffeine metabolism genetics, and risk of cardiovascular disease: A prospective analysis of up to 347,077 individuals and 8368 cases. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2019; doi:10.1093/ajcn/nqy297.
• Wikoff D, et al. Systematic review of the potential adverse effects of caffeine consumption in healthy adults, pregnant women, adolescents, and children. Food and Chemical Toxicology. 2017; doi: 10.1016/j.fct.2017.04.002.

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How old is the coffee bean researchers investigate.

Your coffee beans may have roots that stretch back 600,000 years — according to a new study.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

The coffee bean that we know and love may be over 600,000 years old. That's according to a new study.

PATRICK DESCOMBES: Arabica is actually coming from the mating of two parents, robusta and eugenioides, much like we are coming from our parents.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

That's Patrick Descombes of Nestle. He was one of the researchers involved in the study. He says arabica is the result of a natural crossbreeding of plants that happened long before humans got involved. Descombes likes to use an analogy to describe his research into the origins of coffee.

DESCOMBES: Let's imagine that you have multiple translations of the same book, and you would like to know how similar or different they are. In order to do so, you will need to compare all of them to the same reference book.

FADEL: And that's what the researchers helped create, a high-quality reference book for the most popular coffee out there. They analyzed the family trees of more than 30 different types of arabica, including a sample from the 1700s.

MARTÍNEZ: Their research can be used to help develop better-tasting coffee. Descombes does work for Nestle, after all, a company that owns several coffee brands, but it can also help scientists with another important mission.

DESCOMBES: We could use this information to, for example, develop new coffee varieties that would be resistant to climate changes.

FADEL: And research like that will hopefully keep your cup of Joe full for years to come. Coffee - it fuels MORNING EDITION.

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Coffee is complicated.  Our understanding of the beverage has improved significantly over the past couple of decades, but along with progress more questions arise.  The information contained within this site is based upon both scientific studies and personal experience.  Some experiments are simply not possible to perform and perception continues to be the governing factor for determining coffee quality.  All material that has not been referenced has been written and researched by Michael Griffin.  All videos and pictures have been provided by Michael Griffin.

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University at Buffalo researchers look into past of the coffee bean to create a high quality genome

C offee plants are very sensitive to their environment, which is why they are not grown everywhere. With climate change, will farmers who grow the precious beans always be able to do so? 

Researchers from the University at Buffalo declared that the key to growing coffee plants that can better resist climate change in the decades to come may lie in the ancient past. They have created what they say is the highest quality reference genome to date of the world’s most popular coffee species, Arabica , unearthing secrets about its lineage that span millennia and continents.

Their findings, just published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics under the title “The genome and population genomics of allopolyploid Coffea arabica reveal the diversification history of modern coffee cultivars,” suggest that this species developed more than 600,000 years ago in the forests of Ethiopia through natural mating between two other coffee species. The study found that the number of this plant waxed and waned throughout Earth’s heating and cooling periods over thousands of years before eventually being cultivated in Ethiopia and Yemen and then spread over the globe.

“We’ve used genomic information in plants alive today to go back in time and paint the most accurate picture possible of Arabica ’s long history and determine how modern cultivated varieties are related to each other,” said the study’s co-corresponding author, biology Prof.  Victor Albert. 

Coffee giants like Starbucks and Tim Hortons exclusively use beans from Arabica plants to brew the millions of cups of coffee they serve everyday, yet, in part due to a low genetic diversity stemming from a history of inbreeding and small population size, Arabica is susceptible to many pests and diseases and can be cultivated only in a few places in the world where pathogen threats are lower and climate conditions are more favorable.

“A detailed understanding of the origins and breeding history of contemporary varieties are crucial to developing new Arabica cultivars better adapted to climate change,” Albert noted.

Arabica genome breakthrough

From their new reference genome, accomplished using cutting-edge DNA sequencing technology and advanced data science, the team was able to sequence 39 Arabica varieties and even an 18th century specimen used by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus to name the species. 

“While other public references for Arabica coffee do exist, the quality of our team’s work is extremely high,” says one of the study’s co-leaders, Patrick Descombes, senior expert in genomics at Nestlé Research . “We used state-of-the-art genomics approaches - including long- and short-read high throughput DNA sequencing - to create the most advanced, complete and continuous Arabica reference genome to date.”

Arabica is the source of approximately 60% of the world’s total coffee products, with its seeds helping millions start their day or stay up late. However, the initial crossbreeding that created it was done without any intervention from humans, the researchers wrote.

Arabica formed as a natural hybridization between Coffea canephora and Coffea eugenioides , when it received two sets of chromosomes from each parent. Scientists have had a hard time pinpointing exactly when and where this event took place, with estimates ranging everywhere from 10,000 to one million years ago.

To find evidence for the original event, the researchers ran their various Arabica genomes through a computational modeling program to look for signatures of the species’ foundation. The models show three population bottlenecks during Arabica’s history, with the oldest happening some 29,000 generations -or 610,000 years - ago. This suggests Arabica formed sometime before that, anywhere from 610,000 to a million years ago. “In other words, the crossbreeding that created Arabica wasn’t something that humans did,” said Albert. “It’s quite clear that this event predated modern humans and the cultivation of coffee.”

Coffee plants have long been thought to have developed in Ethiopia, but varieties that the team collected around the Great Rift Valley that stretches from Southeast Africa to Asia, displayed a clear geographic split. The wild varieties studied all originated from the western side, while the cultivated varieties all originated from the eastern side closest to the Bab al-Mandab (“Gait of Tears”) strait that separates Africa and Yemen.

That would align with evidence that coffee cultivation may have started principally in Yemen, around the 15th century. Indian monk Baba Budan is believed to have smuggled the fabled “seven seeds” out of Yemen around 1600, establishing Indian Arabica cultivars and setting the stage for coffee’s global reach today. 

“It looks like Yemeni coffee diversity may be the founder of all of the current major varieties,” Descombes suggested. “Coffee is not a crop that has been heavily crossbred, such as maize or wheat, to create new varieties. People mainly chose a variety they liked and then grew it - so the varieties we have today have probably been around for a long time.”

“Our work has not been unlike reconstructing the family tree of a very important family,” Albert concluded. 

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The Coffee Apocalypse

Are you ready for coffee made from chickpeas soon, you might not have a choice..

This story was produced by  Grist  and co-published with  Slate .

When Henri Kunz was growing up in West Germany in the 1980s, he used to drink an instant coffee substitute called Caro, a blend of barley, chicory root, and rye roasted to approximate the deep color and invigorating flavor of real coffee. “We kids drank it,” Kunz remembered recently. “It had no caffeine, but it tasted like coffee.”

As an adult, Kunz loves real coffee. But he also believes that its days are numbered. Climate change is expected to shift the areas where coffee can grow, with some researchers estimating that the most suitable land for coffee will shrink by more than half by 2050 and that hotter temperatures will make the plants more vulnerable to pests, blight, and other threats. At the same time, demand for coffee is growing, as upwardly mobile people in traditionally tea-drinking countries in Asia develop a taste for java.

“The difference between demand and supply will go like that ,” Kunz put it during a Zoom interview, crossing his arms in front of his chest to form an X, like the “no-good” emoji. Small farmers could face crop failures just as millions of new people develop a daily habit, potentially sending coffee prices soaring to levels that only the wealthy will be able to afford.

To stave off the looming threats, some agricultural scientists are hard at work breeding climate-resilient, high-yield varieties of coffee . Kunz, the founder and chair of a “flavor engineering” company called Stem , thinks he can solve many of these problems by growing coffee cells in a laboratory instead of on a tree. A number of other entrepreneurs are taking a look at coffee substitutes of yore, like the barley beverage Kunz grew up drinking, with the aim of using sustainable ingredients to solve coffee’s environmental problems—and adding caffeine to reproduce its signature jolt.

A crop of startups, with names like Atomo, Northern Wonder, and Prefer, is calling this category of throwbacks “beanless coffee,” even though in some cases their products contain legumes. Beanless coffee “gives you that legendary coffee taste and all the morning pick-me-up you crave, while also leaving you proud that you’re doing your part to help unf—k the planet,” as the San-Francisco-based beanless coffee company Minus puts it . But it’s unclear whether coffee drinkers—deeply attached to the drink’s particular, ineffable taste and aroma—will embrace beanless varieties voluntarily, or only after the coming climate-induced coffee apocalypse forces their hand.

Coffea arabica—the plant species most commonly cultivated for drinking—has been likened to Goldilocks . It thrives in shady environments with consistent, moderate rainfall and in temperatures between 64 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit , conditions often found in the highlands of tropical countries like Guatemala, Ethiopia, and Indonesia. Although coffee plantations can be sustainably integrated into tropical forests, growing coffee leads to environmental destruction more often than not. Farmers cut down trees both to make room for coffee plants and to fuel wood-burning dryers used to process the beans, making coffee one of the top six agricultural drivers of deforestation. When all of a coffee tree’s finicky needs are met, it can produce harvestable beans after three to five years of growth and eventually yield 1 or 2 pounds of green coffee beans per year.

If arabica is Goldilocks, climate change is an angry bear. For some 200 years, humans have been burning fossil fuels, spewing planet-warming carbon dioxide into the air. The resulting floods, droughts, and heat waves, as well as the climate-driven proliferation of coffee borer beetles and fungal infections, are all predicted to make many of today’s coffee-growing areas inhospitable to the crop, destroy coffee farmers’ razor-thin profit margins, and sow chaos in the world’s coffee markets. That shift is already underway: Extreme weather in Brazil sent commodity coffee prices to an 11-year high of $2.58 per pound in 2022. And as coffee growers venture into new regions, they’ll tear down more trees, threatening biodiversity and transforming even more forests from carbon sinks into carbon emitters.

At many times in the past, coffee has been out of reach for most people, so they found cheaper, albeit caffeine-free, alternatives. Caro and other quaint instant beverage mixes, like Postum in the U.S. and caffè d’orzo in Italy, were popular during World War II and in the following years, when coffee was rationed or otherwise hard to come by. But the practice of brewing noncaffeinated, ersatz coffee out of other plants is even older than that. In the Middle East, people have used date seeds to brew a hot, dark drink for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years. In pre-Columbian Central America, Mayans drank a similar beverage made from the seeds of ramón trees found in the rainforest. In Europe and Western Asia, drinks have been made out of chicory, chickpeas , dandelion root, figs, grains, lupin beans , and soybeans. These ingredients have historically been more accessible than coffee, and they sometimes confer purported health benefits.

Today’s beanless-coffee startups are attempting to put a modern spin on these time-honored, low-tech coffee substitutes. Northern Wonder , based in the Netherlands, makes its product primarily out of lupin beans—also known as lupini—along with chickpeas and chicory. Atomo , headquartered in Seattle, infuses date seeds with a proprietary marinade that produces “the same 28 compounds” as coffee, the company boasts. Singapore-based Prefer makes its brew out of a byproduct of soy milk, surplus bread, and spent barley from beer breweries, which are then fermented with microbes. Minus also uses fermentation to bring coffeelike flavors out of “upcycled pits, roots, and seeds.” All these brands add caffeine to at least some of their blends, aiming to offer consumers the same energizing effects they get from the real deal.

“We’ve tried all of the coffee alternatives,” said Maricel Saenz, the CEO of Minus . “And what we realize is that they give us some resemblance to coffee, but it ultimately ends up tasting like toasted grains more than it tastes like coffee.”

In trying to explain what makes today’s beanless coffees different from the oldfangled kind, David Klingen, Northern Wonder’s CEO, compared the relationship with the one between modern meat substitutes and more traditional soybean products like tofu and tempeh. Many plant-based meats contain soybeans, but they’re highly processed and combined with other ingredients to create a convincingly meatlike texture and flavor. So it is with beanless coffee, relative to Caro-style grain beverages. Klingen emphasized that he and his colleagues mapped out the attributes of various ingredients—bitterness, sweetness, smokiness, the ability to form a foam similar to the crema that crowns a shot of espresso—and tried to combine them in a way that produced a well-rounded coffee facsimile, then added caffeine.

By contrast, traditional coffee alternatives like chicory and barley brews have nothing to offer a caffeine addict; Atomo, Minus, Northern Wonder, and Prefer are promising a reliable daily fix.

“Coffee is a ritual and it’s a result,” said Andy Kleitsch, the CEO of Atomo. “And that’s what we’re replicating.”

Each of these new beanless coffee companies has a slightly different definition of sustainability. Northern Wonder’s guiding light is nontropical ingredients, “because we want to make a claim that our product is 100 percent deforestation free,” Klingen said. Almost all its ingredients are annual crops from Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Turkey, countries whose forests are not at substantial risk of destruction from agriculture. Annual crops grow more efficiently than coffee trees, which require years of growth before they begin producing beans. A life cycle analysis of Northern Wonder’s environmental impacts, paid for by the company, shows that its beanless coffee uses approximately a twentieth of the water, generates less than a quarter of the carbon emissions, and requires about a third of the land area associated with real coffee agriculture.

Michael Hoffmann, professor emeritus at Cornell University and the coauthor of Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods We Love and Need , said he was impressed with Northern Wonder’s life cycle analysis, which he described as nuanced and transparent about the limitations of its data. He praised the idea of using efficient crops, saying that some of those used by beanless coffee companies “yield far more per unit area than coffee, which is also a big plus.”

But there are trade-offs associated with higher yields. Daniel El Chami, an agricultural engineer who is the head of sustainability research and innovation for the Italian subsidiary of the fertilizer and plant nutrition company Timac Agro International, pointed out that higher-yield crops tend to use more fertilizer, which is manufactured using fossil fuels in a process that emits carbon. Crops that use land and other resources efficiently can require several times more fertilizer than sustainably grown coffee, he said. For this reason, El Chami just didn’t see how Northern Wonder could wind up emitting less than a quarter of coffee’s emissions.

Other beanless coffee companies are staking their sustainability pitch on the repurposing of agricultural waste. Atomo’s green cred is premised on the fact that its central ingredients, date seeds, are “upcycled” from farms in California’s Coachella Valley. Whereas date farmers typically throw seeds away after pitting, Atomo pays farmers to store the pits in food-safe tote bags that get picked up daily. Atomo’s current recipe also includes crops from farther afield, like ramón seeds from Guatemala and caffeine derived from green tea grown in India, but Kleitsch said they’re looking to add even more upcycled ingredients.

Food waste is a major contributor to climate change, and Hoffmann said repurposing it for beanless coffee is “a very good approach.” Minus, which also uses upcycled date pits, claims that its first product, a canned beanless cold brew (which is not yet available in stores), uses 94 percent less water and produces 86 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than the real thing. Those numbers are based on a life-cycle analysis that Saenz, Minus’ CEO, declined to share because it was being updated. (Atomo expects to release a life-cycle analysis this spring, and Prefer is planning to conduct a study sometime this year.)

Despite beanless coffee companies’ impressive sustainability claims, not everyone is convinced that building an alternative coffee industry from scratch is better than trying to make the existing coffee industry more sustainable—by, for instance, helping farmers grow coffee interspersed with native trees or dry their beans using renewable energy.

El Chami thinks the conclusion that coffee supply will dwindle in an overheating world is uncertain: A review of the research he co-authored found that modelers have reached contradictory conclusions about how climate change will change the amount of land suitable for growing coffee . Although rising temperatures are certainly affecting agriculture, “climate change pressures are overblown from a marketing point of view by private interests seeking to create new needs with higher profit margins,” El Chami said. He added that the multinational companies that buy coffee from small farmers need to help their suppliers implement sustainable practices—and he hoped beanless coffee companies would do the same.

Whether demand for beanless coffee will increase depends a great deal on how much consumers like the taste.

I, for one, enjoyed the $5 Atomo latte that I tried at the Midtown Manhattan location of an Australian cafe chain called Gumption Coffee—the only place on Earth where Atomo is being sold. The pale, frothy concoction tasted slightly sweet and very smooth. Atomo describes its espresso blend as having notes of “dark chocolate, dried fruit, and graham cracker.” If I hadn’t known that it was made with date seeds instead of coffee beans, I would have said it was a regular latte with a dash of caramel syrup added.

The Northern Wonder filter blend that I ordered from the Netherlands (about $12 for a little more than 1 pound of grounds, plus about $27 for international shipping) had to overcome a tougher test: I wanted to drink it black, the way I do my regular morning coffee. I brewed it in my pour-over Chemex carafe, and the dark liquid dripping through the filter certainly looked like coffee. But the aroma was closer to chickpeas roasting in the oven—not an unpleasant smell, just miles away from the transcendent scent of arabica beans. The flavor was also off, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong. Was it a lack of acidity or a lack of sweetness? It wasn’t too bitter, and it left a convincing tannic aftertaste in my mouth. After a few sips, I found myself warming up to it, even though it obviously wasn’t coffee. My Grist colleague Jake Bittle had a similar experience with Northern Wonder, describing the flavor it settled into as “weird Folgers.” If real coffee suddenly became scarce or exorbitantly priced, I could see myself drinking Northern Wonder or something like it. It would certainly be better than forgoing coffee’s flavor and caffeine entirely by drinking nothing at all in the morning, or acclimating to the entirely different ritual and taste of tea.

Klingen concedes that the aroma of beanless coffee needs work. Northern Wonder is developing a beanlike product that, when put through a coffee grinder, releases volatile compounds similar to those that give real coffee its powerful fragrance, like various aldehydes and pyrazines . But beanless coffee could win over some fans even if it doesn’t mimic coffee’s every attribute. Klingen said drinkers often rate his product higher for how much they like it than for how similar it is to coffee. “With Oatly, oat milks or [other] alt milks, there you see the same,” he said. When you ask consumers if oat milk tastes like milk, they say, “ ‘Eh, I don’t know.’ But is it tasty? ‘Yes.’ ”

Just as the dairy industry has tried to prevent alternative milk companies from calling their products “milk,” some people raise an eyebrow at the term “beanless coffee.” Kunz—the German entrepreneur who grew up drinking Caro and is now trying to grow coffee bean cells in a lab—takes issue with using the word coffee to describe products made from grains, fruits, and legumes. “What we do—taking a coffee plant part, specifically a leaf from a coffee tree—it is coffee, because it’s the cell origin of coffee,” Kunz said. Drinks made from anything else, he insists, shouldn’t use the word. Kunz’s cell-cultured coffee product hasn’t been finalized yet and, much like lab-grown meat, faces fairly steep regulatory hurdles before it can be sold in Europe or the United States.

The specter of plant-based meat and dairy looms large over the nascent beanless coffee industry. A slew of startups like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods hit the scene in the 2010s with products that they touted as convincing enough to be able to put animal agriculture out of business. But in recent years, these companies have faced declining sales in the face of concerns about health, taste, and price .

Jake Berber, the CEO and co-founder of Prefer, fears that something similar could happen to beanless coffee businesses. “My hope for everyone in the industry is to keep pushing out really delicious products that people enjoy so that the whole industry of beanless coffee, bean-free coffee, can profit from that, and we can sort of help each other out,” he said.

Different beanless coffee companies are staking out different markets, with some positioning themselves as premium brands. Saenz wouldn’t say how much Minus wants to charge for its canned cold brew, but she said it will be comparable to the “high-end side of coffee, because we believe we compete there in terms of quality.” Atomo is putting the finishing touches on a factory in Seattle with plans to sell its beanless espresso to coffee shops for $20.99 per pound—comparable to a specialty roast.

“The best way to enjoy coffee is to go to a coffee shop and have a barista make you your own lovingly made product,” Kleitsch said. Atomo is aiming to give consumers a “great experience that they can’t get at home.”

In contrast, Northern Wonder and Prefer are targeting the mass market. Northern Wonder is sold in 534 grocery stores in the Netherlands and recently became available at a leading supermarket in Switzerland. Prefer, meanwhile, is selling its blend to coffee houses, restaurants, hotels, and other clients in Singapore with a promise to beat the price of their cheapest arabica beans. Berber predicts that that proposition will get more and more appealing to buyers and consumers in the coming years as the cost of even a no-frills, mediocre espresso drink approaches, and surpasses, $10. A warming planet will help turn coffee beans into a luxury product, and middle-class customers will get priced out. Then, Prefer’s bet on a climate-proof coffee replacement will pay off.

“We will, in the future, be the commodity of coffee,” Berber said.

Is decaf coffee bad for your health? Here’s what to know

In 2023, Canada imported 30 per cent of its coffee from the U.S., 12 per cent from Switzerland and 3.5 per cent from Italy. iStockPhoto / Getty Images

If you enjoy the taste of coffee but don’t want caffeine’s side effects, decaffeinated coffee with 97 per cent of the stimulant removed is an alternative for your morning brew.

Recent new stories, however, may have left you concerned about the safety of decaf coffee.

Health advocacy groups in the U.S. recently petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban the use of methylene chloride in the decaffeination process owing to cancer concerns.

Here’s an explainer about methylene chloride, where Health Canada stands on the chemical, plus tips on how to avoid it when opting for decaf.

What is methylene chloride?

Methylene chloride (also called dichloromethane) is a colourless synthetic chemical that’s used as a solvent in paint and furniture stripping products and a component in aerosol products and other industrial applications.

When it comes to food, methylene chloride is used as a solvent to remove caffeine from coffee beans and tea leaves.

There are several ways to remove caffeine from coffee beans. The most common of those, called the direct method or the European method, involves steaming green unroasted coffee beans to open their pores and make caffeine accessible. The beans are then rinsed with methylene chloride or ethyl acetate to extract the caffeine. Once the caffeine is removed, the beans are washed, dried and roasted.

Methylene chloride is used predominantly in Europe. According to data from the U.S. International Trade Commission, the top source of decaffeinated coffee beans in the U.S. is Germany, followed by Italy and Switzerland.

In 2023, Canada imported 30 per cent of its coffee from the U.S., 12 per cent from Switzerland and 3.5 per cent from Italy.

Methylene chloride is also used to process spices and create extracts used as food ingredients, including hops extract for beer.

Health risks of methylene chloride

When inhaled, methylene chloride can cause wheezing, shortness of breath, headaches, dizziness, nausea and memory loss.

Exposure to high levels of the chemical can cause serious harms to health, even death.

Owing to its toxicity, in 2019 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the chemical from being manufactured and sold as a paint remover.

In 2023, the agency proposed a ban on all consumer uses and most industrial and commercial uses of methylene chloride.

Animal studies have demonstrated that inhaling methylene chloride causes liver and lung cancer.

As such, methylene chloride is classified as a Group 2A probable carcinogen to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an agency of the World Health Organization.

This means there is strong evidence that methylene chloride can cause cancer in humans, but at present it’s not conclusive.

What about methylene chloride in decaf coffee?

Both the Canadian and U.S. governments strictly limit residues of methylene chloride to no more than 10 parts per million (0.001 per cent) in decaffeinated roasted coffee beans, decaffeinated instant coffee and decaffeinated tea leaves.

According to Health Canada, data indicate actual levels of methylene chloride in dry decaffeinated coffee (and tea) are much lower than the permitted limit.

What’s more, the amount in coffee and tea will be even less when hot water is used to make the beverages since methylene chloride vaporizes at a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius. (Boiling water is 100 degrees Celsius.)

There is no evidence that drinking coffee that’s been decaffeinated using the European Method poses health risks.

Rather, many studies have linked drinking decaf (and regular) coffee every day – compared to not drinking coffee – with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and all-cause mortality.

Current petition to ban methylene chloride

Last November, the U.S.-based Environmental Defense Fund, along with its partners, sent a petition to the FDA to revoke its approval for four carcinogenic chemicals approved for use in food. One was methylene chloride.

The health advocacy groups argue that the U.S. government has been disregarding the Delaney Clause, part of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act since 1958.

The clause requires the FDA to ban additives that are found to cause or induce cancer in humans or animals as indicated by testing.

The FDA filed the petition for consideration in December and accepted public comments until March 11. The petition is currently being reviewed.

What does Health Canada say?

Methylene chloride was assessed in Canada in 1993 and was classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans” based on available evidence at the time.

Since then, the government has continued to collect information about methylene chloride and has recently prioritized it for further assessment.

Data on potential health effects and emerging science will be considered in determining whether methylene chloride is toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

If so, the government will take action to protect Canadians, including, if needed, no longer allowing the chemical to be used in the production of foods such as decaf coffee and tea.

If you’re concerned about methylene chloride, you can avoid it without giving up your decaf.

Look for decaf coffee products made using the “Swiss Water Process,” a method that does not use chemical solvents to extract caffeine. Decaf coffee served at Tim Hortons and Second Cup comes from beans processed this way. (Starbucks uses the European method to decaffeinate its beans.)

You can also choose products labelled certified organic, solvent-free or naturally decaffeinated with carbon dioxide.

Leslie Beck, a Toronto-based private practice dietitian, is director of food and nutrition at Medcan. Follow her on Twitter @LeslieBeckRD

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FinTechCore is a platform for fintech projects. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

DAS Index Management

Index-based solutions - Integrated portfolios for investment companies and liquidity for crypto exchanges Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Mobile app development, UX/UI, full cycle of mobile app development Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Catalog of Russian Cash Back and Promo Code Services Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Rosmicrocredit

Rosmicrocredit is an online payday lender that offers short-term personal loans to consumers in Russia. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

RedStone Capital

RedStone Capital is an investment holding company with a portfolio of more than 20 businesses Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Open banking platform Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Russian FinTech Association

Russian FinTech Association is a nonprofit fintech trade body, promoting sound innovation for a vibrant digital FS ecosystem in Russia. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Galaktika is a global platform and fund to create jointly global space project – first city in space. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Q Platform is a globally connected fintech- multi-banking platform in Russia and CIS. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Platform connecting projects and investors Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Eqvanta is a group of companies in the field of alternative financing and financial technologies. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

We are a custom software solutions provider with a focus on the Blockchain, Adtech and Fintech industries. Based out of Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation

Instabank banking platform scheme is based on mobile first methodology. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Optimoney is a company which provides short-term loans. Based out of Kantemirovka, Voronezh, Russian Federation

Crypto Bazar

CryptoBazar is the largest platform, where business receive money for ICO and investors get reliable projects. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Digital Finance International

DFI leverages the most advanced technical solutions to provide world-class consumer lending products to customers around the globe. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

DTI Algorithmic

Financial technology company, professional algo-engineering, provides financial and investment planning services to individuals. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

VentureClub

Best startups for the best investors. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Lime Capital Partners

Lime Capital Partners is a financial services platform that provides its users with credit services. Based out of Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

Coinstelegram Fund

investment firm focused exclusively on ventures, tokens, and projects related to blockchain tech, digital currency, and crypto assets Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Erachain allows the public to exchange tokens, assets, crypto-currencies, electronic bills, claim rights and crypto-units. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Boomstarter

Boomstarter is a web-based platform that provides funding for creative ideas. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Mobile PFM which covers all your banks in one app, it also converts all banking sms & text notifications into single push inbox Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Digital Rating Agency is the first professional provider of independent evaluation of ICO projects, digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Zaymigo.com is a group lending marketplace, where investors meet with borrowers without intermediaries. Based out of Nizhniy Novgorod, Nizhegorod, Russian Federation

Payture creates and improve the payment infrastructure in Russia to make purchases of your customers easier, faster and safer. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Simple Invest

Simple Invest is a mobile app to invest in stocks Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

NWTN develop smart trading platform that can be implemented into the existing infrastructure of financial institutions easily. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Software Solutions For Financial Systems. Based out of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad, Russian Federation

Assist is an internet service provider and payment solutions integrator for payments by bank cards. Based out of Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation

Simplyfi is a p2p platform for small business financing where loans can be provided by both individuals and investment companies. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

PlayPoint develops blockchain technology for online payments. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Finbord is provider of an online information exchange platform for finance industry. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Brem is the future of the real estate market. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Unistream Bank

Mobile App for money transfer and banking services for the migrant workers. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

MOBI.Money enables Russian mobile subscribers to pay for goods and services and perform money transfer using their mobile accounts. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Squarex simplifies and accelerates the process of financing, building and trading property, focusing on early stage investments. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Instant Payment Acceptance Network Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Finflow offers digital platform which helps individual investors and personal financial advisors to manage their investment portfolios Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

DoBETacceptBET

We create a trading platform of options. - No variation margin. - with an understandable, invariable guarantee. - with maximum protection Based out of Sochi, Krasnodar, Russian Federation

CardsPro is a financial technology company, aiming to be the largest player in the Russian Prepaid, Gift and Virtual cards market. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Cloud platform which allows retailers sell goods using loans Based out of Kazan, Tatarstan, Russian Federation

Helps identifying authenticity of ID distantly, is used for online loans, distant bank accounts opening, biometry. Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation

Platform for effective management of own assets and system that provides rent or purchase of asset where it is geographically needed Based out of Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation