The Lineup · Field map
Coffee Variety Family Tree
A family tree with footnotes. Coffee lineage is less oak tree, more shared group chat.
Every solid path below has a source naming the relationship. Where the science or the trade name gets fuzzy, we stop the line instead of finishing it with vibes.
The old cultivated lines
Typica and Bourbon sit behind a remarkable amount of the coffee now grown in Latin America. Mutations happened in fields; breeders made the later crosses.
Bourbon — natural mutation — Caturra.
Caturranatural mutation
Found in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in the early twentieth century; the compact plant became a breeding workhorse.
World Coffee Research — CaturraTypica and Bourbon — natural cross — Mundo Novo.
Mundo Novonatural cross
A vigorous Brazilian meeting of the two old cultivated groups.
World Coffee Research — Mundo NovoMundo Novo and Caturra — bred cross — Catuaí.
Mundo NovoCaturraCatuaíbred cross
Made by Instituto Agronômico in 1949, combining Mundo Novo with compact Caturra.
World Coffee Research — Catuaí
How Pacamara got so large
Pacamara is not a mysterious giant. Its name is a stitched-together clue to its two documented parents.
Bourbon — natural mutation — Pacas.
Pacasnatural mutation
A compact Bourbon mutation selected in El Salvador.
World Coffee Research — PacasTypica — natural mutation — Maragogipe.
Maragogipenatural mutation
A very-large-bean Typica mutation first found in Brazil.
World Coffee Research — MaragogipePacas and Maragogipe — bred cross — Pacamara.
PacasMaragogipePacamarabred cross
A Salvadoran breeding program crossed Pacas and Maragogipe; the resulting population remains heterogeneous.
World Coffee Research — Pacamara
The rust-resistance bridge
Timor Hybrid matters because it carries canephora ancestry into arabica breeding. That bridge is the useful fact; ‘Robusta’ is not a synonym for every descendant.
C. arabica and C. canephora — natural interspecies hybrid — Timor Hybrid.
C. arabicaC. canephoraTimor Hybridnatural interspecies hybrid
A rare natural crossing that supplied breeders with coffee-leaf-rust resistance.
World Coffee Research — A new Arabusta for the 21st centuryCaturra and Timor Hybrid — breeding family — Catimor.
CaturraTimor HybridCatimorbreeding family
Catimor is a family of Caturra × Timor Hybrid breeding lines, not one genetically uniform plant.
World Coffee Research — the Catimor familyCaturra and Timor Hybrid 1343 — composite selection — Castillo.
CaturraTimor Hybrid 1343Castillocomposite selection
Cenicafé developed Castillo from multiple selected progenies, so the retail name covers a deliberately diverse composite variety.
Cenicafé — Castillo zonal varieties
Other documented lines
Not every coffee in The Lineup descends neatly from the Latin American branch.
Ethiopian landrace population — collected selection — Gesha.
Geshacollected selection
Gesha traces to Ethiopian collection material; ‘landrace’ names a diverse population, not a single parent cultivar.
World Coffee Research — Geisha (Panama)S288 and Kent — bred cross — S795.
S288KentS795bred cross
S288 is an introgressed line; WCR records S795 as S288 × Kent.
World Coffee Research — S795
No line drawn on purpose
Names we cannot honestly connect yet
SL28
Selected from drought-resistant material brought from Tanganyika; that history is not the same thing as a verified two-parent pedigree.
Pink Bourbon
The trade name describes pink fruit, not proven Bourbon parentage. We leave it disconnected until a stable, citable pedigree exists.
Ombligón
A recent Colombian market name whose genetic identity is still being worked out. Similar-looking plants are not proof of parentage.
Why the missing branches matter
Variety names move through farms, nurseries and markets faster than lab confirmation does. That does not make the names useless; it means a bag label and a pedigree answer different questions.
This is our readable slice of the map, not a replacement for the research catalog. For the whole serious thing, use World Coffee Research’s Variety Catalog.