Coffee wild relative voted among top 10 new species

Here’s a cool idea. Apparently the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists get together regularly and pick the top 10 new species described in the previous year. They’ve just announced the 2008 picks, and they include a crop wild relative. It’s Coffea charrieriana, a caffeine-free coffee from Cameroon. It was named after “Professor A. Charrier, who managed coffee breeding research and collecting missions at IRD during the last 30 years of the 20th century.” And with whom I had the privilege to work some years back in the early days of the African Coffee Research Network. Congratulations to all concerned.