Arno Viehoever, pharmacognosist in charge of the pharmacognosy laboratory of the Bureau of Chemistry, United States Department of Agriculture, has recently announced findings confirming Hartwich which appear to permit of differentiation between robusta, arabica, and liberica.[97] These are mainly the peculiar folding of the endosperm, showing quite generally a distinct hook in the case of the robusta coffee bean. The size of the embryo, and especially the relation of the rootlet to hypercotyl, will be found useful in the differentiation of the species Coffea arabica, liberica, and robusta ([see cut, page 142]).
One-Year-Old Robusta Estate, on Sumatra's West Coast
Viehoever and Lepper carried on a series of cup tests of robusta, the results as to taste and flavor being distinctly favorable. They summarized their studies and tests as follows:
The time when coffee could be limited to beans obtained from plants of Coffea arabica and Coffea liberica has passed. Other species, with qualities which make them desirable, even in preference to the well reputed named ones, have been discovered and cultivated. Among them, the species or group of Coffea robusta has attained a great economic significance, and is grown in increasing amounts. While it has, as reports seem to indicate, not as yet been possible to obtain a strain that would be as desirable in flavor as the old "standard" Coffea arabica, well known as Java or "Fancy Java" coffee, its merits have been established.
The botanical origin is not quite cleared up, and the classification of the varieties belonging to the robusta group deserves further study. Anatomical means of differentiating robusta coffee from other species or groups, may be applied as distinctly helpful....
As is usual in most of the coffee species, caffein is present. The amount appears to be, on an average, somewhat larger (even exceeding 2.0 percent) than in the South American coffee species. In no instance, however, did the amount exceed the maximum limits observed in coffee in general....
Due to its rapid growth, early and prolific yield, resistance to coffee blight, and many other desirable qualities, Coffea robusta has established "its own". In the writers' judgment, robusta coffee deserves consideration and recognition.