Caturra vs. Catuaí

Caturra: one gene that made the tree small

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Caturra is a natural mutation of Bourbon, discovered on a plantation in Minas Gerais in Brazil between 1915 and 1918. The catalogue describes it as a single-gene mutation that causes the plant to grow smaller. From 1937 the state agricultural institute at Campinas made selections from it.

What breeders valued was the size. A small tree with closely spaced branches can be planted closer to its neighbours and bears more fruit in the same space. The catalogue notes that Caturra was never officially released in Brazil, and became common in Central America instead: it reached Guatemala in the 1940s, though wide commercial adoption took another three decades, and went from there to Costa Rica, Honduras and Panama.

Catuaí: the same smallness, bred into a vigorous plant

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Catuaí is a cross between Mundo Novo, a productive Brazilian variety that is itself a cross of Typica and Bourbon, and Caturra. The same institute made the cross in 1949 and released the variety in Brazil in 1972 after selecting individual plants over successive generations.

The catalogue does not state what the breeders were aiming for. It describes Catuaí as characterised by great vigour and low height, and as less compact than Caturra. It records yellow-fruited and red-fruited types, and many later selections in different countries. Catuaí therefore carries both of the old lines, where Caturra is Bourbon alone.

Which yields more is not a settled question

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The catalogue places both in the same yield category, and it is candid about why the answer depends on where you ask. In Brazil, it says, several Catuaí lines are notable for high productivity. The lines that were transferred to Central America seem to be less productive, and it reports that studies in Honduras and Costa Rica found no significant difference in productivity between Caturra and Catuaí.

So the common statement that Catuaí out-yields Caturra holds for some lines in some places. A grower choosing between them is choosing between particular selections, not between two fixed quantities.

What two small trees did to a region

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The catalogue credits both varieties with a share in the intensification of coffee growing in Central America: higher-density planting, often in full sun, in the second half of the twentieth century. It dates Catuaí's part to the 1970s and 1980s. Caturra became important enough to be used as the benchmark against which new varieties were tested, and the catalogue still uses it as a reference point for its own categories.

Neither resists leaf rust. Both are rated susceptible, and both are susceptible to coffee berry disease and to nematodes. That shared weakness is why Caturra became a parent of the rust-resistant Catimor group, and why the catalogue records Honduran breeders crossing Catuaí with Timor Hybrid lines.

The plants on either side of this pair

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• Bourbon — The tall variety Caturra mutated from. Same yield category in the catalogue, rated a band higher for quality.
• Mundo Novo — Catuaí's other parent: a tall, vigorous cross of Typica and Bourbon grown widely in South America.
• Catimor — What breeders made by crossing Caturra with the rust-resistant Timor Hybrid. A group of varieties, not one.
• Villa Sarchi — A separate compact mutation of Bourbon, found in Costa Rica, that played Caturra's role in the Sarchimor group.

What to do next

• Caturra — The mutation, its history and its full catalogue entry.
• Catuaí — The cross, and where it is grown today.
• Catimor vs Sarchimor — What happened when breeders crossed compact varieties like these with a rust-resistant parent.