Coffee Rust

coffee rust, also called coffee leaf rust, devastating foliar disease of coffee plants caused by the fungus Hemileia vastatrix. Long known in coffee-growing areas of Africa, the Near East, India, Asia, and Australasia, coffee rust was discovered in 1970 to be widespread in Brazil, the first known infected area in the Western Hemisphere. Coffee rust destroyed the once-flourishing coffee plantations of Sri Lanka and Java in the late 1800s, and an epidemic in Central America and the Caribbean has decimated numerous plantations in the region since 2012.

The symptoms of coffee rust include small, yellowish, oily spots on the upper leaf surface that expand into larger round spots that turn bright orange to red and finally brown with a yellow border. The rust pustules are powdery and orange-yellow on the underleaf surface. Later the pustules turn black. Rusted leaves drop so that affected trees are virtually denuded; such trees have significantly lower coffee yields and usually die within a few years.

Coffee rust can be partially controlled by the timely application of fungicide sprays during wet seasons. Plantations in some areas have been moved to higher and cooler altitudes, 1,800 to 2,100 metres (6,000 to 7,000 feet), at which the rust fungus has difficulty reproducing, though global warming is expected to further the spread of the disease into these areas. There is evidence that shade-grown coffees, which are not grown as monocultures, are somewhat less susceptible, as the agroforestry practice of mixing tree crops greatly slows the spread of the disease. Additionally, resistant varieties of Robusta coffee (Coffea canefora) have been developed, but the beans are generally considered to be of lower quality than those of the vulnerable Arabica plants (C. arabica). One resistant variety, Lempira, was widely planted in Honduras but lost its resistance to the disease in 2017, resulting in crop losses in that country. No resistant varieties have shown to be impervious to all races of the fungus.