评论
打印
The coffee you had this morning could have its beginnings some 600,000 years ago.
您今天早上喝的咖啡可能起源于大约60万年前。
Using genes from coffee plants from around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world's most popular kind of coffee.
研究人员利用世界各地咖啡植物的基因，为世界上最受欢迎的一种咖啡建立了一个家族树。
Scientists call it Coffea arabica.
科学家称它为阿拉比卡咖啡（Coffea arabica）。
Coffee lovers know it simply as "arabica."
咖啡爱好者只知道它叫“阿拉比卡”。
The researchers recently published a new study about coffee.
研究人员最近发表了一项关于咖啡的新研究。
They found that the species appeared around 600,000 years ago.
他们发现，阿拉比卡咖啡树出现于大约60万年前。
The plant was likely the result of natural breeding of two other coffee species.
这种植物很可能是其他两种咖啡植物自然杂交的结果。
Victor Albert of the University at Buffalo was a co-leader of the study.
美国纽约州立大学布法罗分校的维克多·阿尔伯特是这项研究的共同负责人。
He said the plant likely developed without the help of humans.
他说，这种植物很可能是在没有人类帮助的情况下发展起来的。
Wild coffee plants likely started in Ethiopia.
野生咖啡植物可能起源于埃塞俄比亚。
But they are thought to have been first roasted and brewed in Yemen starting in the 1400s.
但人们认为，从15世纪开始，人们在也门首次烘焙和冲泡咖啡。
In the 1600s, Indian monk Baba Budan is said to have taken seven raw coffee beans back to his homeland from Yemen, laying the beginnings for coffee's worldwide takeover.
17 世纪，印度僧侣巴巴·布丹（Baba Budan）据说从也门带回了7颗生咖啡豆，为咖啡在全球的发展奠定了基础。
Arabica coffee, loved for its smooth and sweet flavor, now makes up 60 to 70 percent of the global coffee market.
阿拉比卡咖啡因柔滑香甜的口味而深受喜爱，目前占全球咖啡消费市场份额的60%至70%。
The rest of the market is made up of robusta, a stronger and more bitter-tasting coffee made from one of arabica's parents, Coffea canephora.
其余的市场份额则由罗布斯塔咖啡占据。罗布斯塔咖啡是由阿拉比卡咖啡的亲本之——卡内弗拉咖啡（Coffea canephora）制成的一种咖啡，味道更浓烈、更苦涩。
To learn about arabica coffee's past, researchers studied the genetic information, or genomes, of C. canephora and another parent plant called Coffea eugenioides.
为了了解阿拉比卡咖啡的过去，研究人员研究了卡内弗拉咖啡（C. canephora）和另一种名为欧基尼奥伊德斯咖啡（Coffea eugenioides）的亲本植物的遗传信息或基因组。
They also studied more than 30 different arabica plants.
他们还研究了30多种不同的阿拉比卡植物。
One of the plants was a sample from the 1700s provided by the Natural History Museum in London.
其中一株是伦敦自然史博物馆提供的18世纪的样本。
The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus used that plant to give coffee its scientific name.
瑞典博物学家卡尔·林奈用这种植物为咖啡命名。
The study appeared recently in the publication Nature Genetics.
这项研究最近发表在期刊《自然·遗传学》（Nature Genetics）上。
Researchers from Nestlé, a big Swiss food company which owns several coffee brands, helped with the study.
雀巢公司的研究人员为这项研究提供了帮助，该公司是拥有多个咖啡品牌的瑞士大型食品公司。
The arabica plant's population changed over thousands of years before humans began growing it.
在人类开始种植阿拉比卡咖啡树之前的数千年里，阿拉比卡咖啡的种群发生了变化。
The arabica plants did well during warm, wet periods and suffered through dry ones.
在温暖潮湿的时期，阿拉比卡植物生长良好，而在干燥的时期，它们的生长就会受到影响。
These difficult times created what scientists call "population bottlenecks," when only a small number of genetically similar plants survived.
这些困难时期导致了科学家所说的“种群瓶颈”，即只有少量基因相似的植物存活下来。
Today, these genetic similarities mean arabica coffee plants are more likely to be hurt by diseases like coffee leaf rust, which causes costly losses every year.
如今，这些基因相似性意味着阿拉比卡咖啡植物更容易受到咖啡叶锈病等疾病的危害，而咖啡叶锈病每年都会造成严重的损失。
The researchers explored the makeup of one arabica variety that is resistant to coffee leaf rust.
研究人员探究了一种对咖啡叶锈病有抗性的阿拉比卡品种的构成。
They are interested in parts of its genetic code that could help protect the plant.
他们对其遗传密码中有助于保护植物的部分很感兴趣。
The study clarifies how arabica came to be and gives clues that could help protect the crop, said Fabian Echeverria of Texas A&M University.
德克萨斯农工大学的法比安·埃切维里亚（Fabian Echeverria）说，这项研究阐明了阿拉比卡的起源，并提供了有助于保护植物的线索。
Echeverria was not involved with the research.
埃切维里亚没有参与这项研究。
Exploring arabica's past and present could help give information about how to keep coffee plants healthy – ensuring morning cups of coffee into the future.
探索阿拉比卡的过去和现在，有助于提供有关如何保持咖啡植物健康的信息，从而确保在未来的早晨也能喝到咖啡。
I'm John Russell.
约翰·拉塞尔为您报道。
译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
