On Sarchimors (EN)

Sarchimor is what in botany we call an introgressed variety. These are varieties of Coffea arabica that contain genetic traits of different species, most commonly Coffea canephora (Robusta) but also Coffea liberica. “Introgressed” literally means “brought over”.

In the 1920s one arabica plant on the island of East Timor reproduced with a robusta plant and created an entirely new coffee, that is now known as the Timor Hybrid. This is very unusual, because plants of different species should not be able to reproduce and make offsprings exciting because it had the disease resistance of robusta and it had some of the good flavor characteristics of arabica.

In search of improving the flavor, they decided to cross the hybrid more with different Arabica varieties, most commonly with Caturra and Villa Sarchi. These crosses led to the creation of the two main groups of introgressed coffee varieties today: Catimors (Caturra + Timor Hybrid) and Sarchimors (Villa Sarchi + Timor Hybrid).


For more information about Arabica coffee varieties see:
World Coffee Research, “Arabica Coffee Varieties” varieties.worldcoffeeresearch.org

Peter Giuliano, "Varieties of Coffee" https://youtu.be/uRNci2lywmg