A breeding parent, not a variety farmers plant
Timor Hybrid
A natural cross between an arabica and a robusta plant, discovered on the island of Timor in 1927. It carried robusta's resistance to leaf rust into a plant that could breed with arabica, and almost every rust-resistant arabica released since descends from it.
In short
The Timor Hybrid is not a variety anyone buys. It is a plant that should not exist: arabica and robusta are different species with different numbers of chromosomes, and they do not normally cross. In the 1920s, on the island of Timor, one arabica plant and one robusta plant did, and the offspring could breed with arabica while carrying robusta's resistance to coffee leaf rust. The catalogue gives only the decade. A 2017 review of leaf rust is more exact: it says the plant was discovered in 1927, standing out for its resistance among crops of Typica.
Almost every rust-resistant arabica in the World Coffee Research catalogue descends from that accident, many of them from two plants selected in Portugal. That is both why the Timor Hybrid matters and why its descendants are now losing the resistance it gave them.
From one island to most of the coffee world
Sourced
1920s, Timor
An arabica and a robusta plant cross spontaneously. The offspring is an arabica-type plant carrying robusta genetic material, including resistance to leaf rust.
1958 or 1959, Portugal
The Centro de Investigação das Ferrugens do Cafeeiro, a Portuguese centre for research on coffee rusts, receives Timor Hybrid seed in two shipments and selects two plants for their high resistance.
1967, the first crosses
Breeders there begin crossing those plants with compact arabica varieties, aiming for a plant that resists rust and can be planted densely. The two selected plants, numbered 832/1 and 832/2, are the Timor Hybrid parents the catalogue names most often.
Catimor and Sarchimor
Crossed with Caturra the Timor Hybrid gives the lines called Catimor. Crossed with Villa Sarchi it gives a hybrid numbered H361, called Sarchimor.
1971 onwards, the trials
After first tests in Brazil, the Sarchimor hybrid is sent for field trials to more than a dozen countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia. Each national programme selects its own lines.
1978, Central America organises
With leaf rust newly arrived in the region, the Central American countries form a joint programme, and a research station in Costa Rica receives fifth-generation Catimor seed from Brazil for further selection.
The sequence as told in the World Coffee Research catalogue's history of the Catimor and Sarchimor groups. The catalogue gives the year the seed reached Portugal as 1958 or 1959, and only the decade for the cross; a 2017 review of leaf rust gives 1927 as the year the plant was discovered.
Why one plant could do what breeders could not
CoffeeHQ explanation
Arabica is a narrow species. The catalogue's history describes most of the world's arabica as descended from a small number of trees taken out of Yemen from the late seventeenth century, and calls the result a genetic bottleneck. Leaf rust met a crop with very little variation to draw on, and breeders working inside arabica had few resistant plants to cross.
Robusta resists rust far better, and a deliberate cross between the species is difficult. The Timor Hybrid solved the problem by having already happened. Because the plant behaved as an arabica, it could be crossed with ordinary arabica varieties, and the resistance came along. Breeders call this introgression: genes from one species brought into another.
What was built from it
Sourced
- The Catimor group
- Timor Hybrid crossed with Caturra. Costa Rica 95, Lempira, Catisic, IHCAFE 90 and many others are separate selections from this parentage, made by different national programmes.
- The Sarchimor group
- Timor Hybrid crossed with Villa Sarchi. Marsellesa, Parainema, Cuscatleco, Obatá and IAPAR 59 belong here, along with the unstable line numbered T5296.
- Crosses with other compact varieties
- The catalogue records Brazilian and Indian varieties from Catuaí crossed with the Timor Hybrid, such as Catiguá MG2 and S4808, which it files as introgressed but outside the two named groups.
- The Kenyan composites
- Ruiru 11 and Batian draw on Timor Hybrid lines among several parents, chiefly for resistance to coffee berry disease as well as to rust.
- The newer F1 hybrids
- Several first-generation hybrids use a Sarchimor line as one parent and an Ethiopian plant as the other, so the Timor Hybrid's genes are in those too.
A single source of resistance is a single point of failure
Sourced
The catalogue is direct about the weakness in all this. Because most of the available resistant varieties obtained their resistance from one shared parent, it reports that most experts believe most existing rust-resistant varieties will stop being resistant in the near to medium term.
It names cases. From the early 2000s, experts in Central America noticed rust on varieties that had resisted it for decades, notably Lempira in Honduras and Costa Rica 95 in Costa Rica, and the catalogue now lists both as confirmed susceptible in those countries. It adds that a breakdown confirmed in one country does not mean resistance is broken everywhere, and that the impact depends on which races of the fungus are present.
It also describes how hard this is to track. Many farmers do not know for certain which variety they grow, so a report of rust on a resistant variety has to be checked by DNA fingerprinting before it counts.
The reputation for a poorer cup
Tendency, not a guarantee
Varieties descended from the Timor Hybrid have, in the catalogue's words, traditionally been associated with lower cup quality than others. Its own ratings bear some of that out and complicate the rest: within the Catimor group they run from very low to good, and Batian, which also carries Timor Hybrid parentage, is rated very good.
So robusta ancestry is not a verdict on a cup. What a reader can fairly take from a bag that names one of these varieties is that it was bred first for survival and yield, and that how it tastes depends on which selection it is, where it was grown and how it was processed.
What to do next
- Catimor — The first group bred from it, and why the word covers very different plants.
- Sarchimor — The second group, from the cross with Villa Sarchi.
- F1 hybrids — The next generation of breeding, which combines these lines with Ethiopian plants.
- Robusta — The species the resistance came from.
- Become a coffee expert — A structured programme from the plant and its processing to roasting, water and tasting.
How the Timor Hybrid's resistance was bred into arabica
One natural cross between arabica and robusta, crossed in turn with two compact Bourbon mutations, gave two groups of varieties. Each name below is a separate variety with its own ratings.
Diagram: descent as the catalogue records it
Timor Hybrid × Caturra: the Catimor group
Crosses of Timor Hybrid lines with Caturra, selected separately in different countries.
Catisic
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid 832/1 x Caturra
Costa Rica 95
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid 832/1 x Caturra
Lempira
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid 832/1 x Caturra
IHCAFE 90
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid 832/1 x Caturra
Oro Azteca
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid 832/1 x Caturra
Fronton
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid x Caturra
Catimor 129
Selection. Parentage recorded: Selection of a Catimor breeding line from Colombia (Caturra x Timor Hybrid 1343)
Anacafe 14
Cross. Parentage recorded: (Timor Hybrid 832/1 x Caturra) x Pacamara
Timor Hybrid × Villa Sarchi: the Sarchimor group
Crosses of a Timor Hybrid line with Villa Sarchi. One of them, T5296, was never recommended to farmers and was selected from again.
T5296
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid CIFC 832/2 x Villa Sarchi
Parainema
Selection. Parentage recorded: Selection of T5296
Cuscatleco
Selection. Parentage recorded: Selection of T5296
Marsellesa
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid 832/2 x Villa Sarchi CIFC 971/10
Obata (Red)
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid 832/2 x Villa Sarchi CIFC 971/10
IAPAR 59
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid 832/2 x Villa Sarchi
Limani
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid 832/2 x Villa Sarchi
Monte Claro
Cross. Parentage recorded: Timor Hybrid 832/2 x Villa Sarchi CIFC 971/11
What this diagram does not show
- The Colombian varieties bred from Caturra and the Timor Hybrid, which the catalogue does not carry.
- Which Timor Hybrid line each variety descends from beyond what its entry states. The entries name lines 832/1, 832/2 and 1343; the diagram does not separate them.
- Varieties bred from the Timor Hybrid with other parents, such as Catuaí, which the catalogue files as introgressed but outside both groups.
- Whether a variety's rust resistance still holds. The catalogue warns that resistance from the Timor Hybrid is breaking down.
Drawn by CoffeeHQ from the lineage statements in the World Coffee Research variety catalogue, read on 8 October 2026. Each plant is placed only under a parent its own entry names, and the words beside it are the entry's. It is not a complete family tree.
Where Timor Hybrid is documented in the atlas
Only countries CoffeeHQ has written an entry for, and only where a document it has read names Timor Hybrid there. This is not a list of everywhere it is grown.
- Jamaica. Grown beside Typica and Caturra on the St Andrew farm in the same 2023 field study. One farm; nothing read says it is planted elsewhere on the island. Source: Coffee Berry Borer, Hypothenemus hampei (Ferrari) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae): Activity and Infestation in the High Mountain and Blue Mountain Regions of Jamaica.
- Timor-Leste. Found on the island of Timor in 1927, on a 2017 review's account: one plant resistant to leaf rust among crops of Typica, later shown to be a natural cross of arabica with robusta. No document read says how much of it is planted in Timor-Leste today. Source: The coffee leaf rust pathogen Hemileia vastatrix: one and a half centuries around the tropics.