Data from: Hybrid coffee cultivars may enhance agroecosystem resilience to climate change

Anthropogenic climate change is predicted to cause shifts in temperature
and precipitation patterns that will be detrimental for global
agriculture. Developing comprehensive strategies for building climate
resilient agroecosystems is critical for maintaining future crop
production. Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica) is highly sensitive to the
quantity and timing of precipitation, so alterations in precipitation
patterns that are predicted under climate change are likely to be a major
challenge for maintaining coffee agroecosystems. We assessed cultivar
selection as a potential component of more resilient coffee agroecosystems
by evaluating water stress responses among five Arabica coffee cultivars
(clonal hybrids H10 and H1 and seedling lines Catuai 44, Catuai, and Villa
Sarchi) using a precipitation reduction experiment in the highlands of
Tarrazú, Costa Rica. During the first harvest (eighteen months after
planting), plants under the rainout treatment had 211% greater total fruit
weight and over 50% greater biomass than under the control treatment,
potentially due to protection from unusually high rainfall during this
period of our experiment. At the second harvest (thirty months after
planting), after a year of more typical rainfall, plants under rainout
still produced 66% more fruit by weight than under control. The magnitude
of the responses varied among cultivars where, at the first harvest, H10
and H1 had approximately 92% and 81% greater fruit production and 18% and
22% greater biomass, respectively, and at the second harvest H10 had 60%
more fruit production than the overall average. Thus, our findings suggest
that the hybrid lines H10 and H1 are more resilient than the other
cultivars to the stress of high soil moisture. Overall, our results
indicate that stress due to higher than average rainfall could impair
coffee plant growth and production, and that cultivar selection is likely
to be an important tool for maintaining the viability of coffee
production, and the resilience of global agroecosystems more generally,
under climate change.