IAPAR 59

IAPAR 59 is a Brazilian coffee variety bred to survive Coffee leaf rust and to crop heavily on ordinary commercial farms. Its parents are Timor Hybrid 832/2 × Villa Sarchi, which makes it a member of the Sarchimor family, and it was bred by IAPAR, the agricultural research institute of the Brazilian state of Paraná.¹

In plain terms: take a compact Costa Rican dwarf tree that tastes decent and gets sick, cross it with a natural Arabica–Robusta accident that tastes worse and doesn’t get sick, and select the children for the best of both. That is the whole Sarchimor idea. IAPAR 59 is Brazil’s version of it, and the one the catalogue rates hardest on cup quality.

Two things make it worth a note rather than a row in the Sarchimor table. It is the only Sarchimor selection the World Coffee Research catalogue rates “Low” for quality — the bottom of the scale.¹ And a farm in Brazil’s mountains — Camocim Estate — took first place at the 2017 Cup of Excellence Brazil Naturals at 93.60 points with a lot ACE’s own farm directory credits to IAPAR 59, which is the most awkward fact in the entire rust-resistant-hybrids-can’t-cup argument.²³

What the catalogue actually says

Every figure below is from the World Coffee Research variety record for IAPAR 59, confirmed directly at source.¹

Field	IAPAR 59
Genetic description	Introgressed (Sarchimor related)
Lineage	Timor Hybrid 832/2 × Villa Sarchi
Breeder	Instituto Agronômico do Paraná (IAPAR), Brazil
Country / year released	Brazil — year not given
Stature	Dwarf / compact
Leaf tip colour	Light bronze
Bean size	Average
Yield potential	Medium
Quality potential at high altitude	Low
Coffee leaf rust	Intermediate resistance
Coffee berry disease	Susceptible
Nematodes	Resistant to Meloidogyne exigua; not resistant to Pratylenchus spp.
Nutrition requirement	High
Ripening	Average
Planting density	5,000–6,000 plants/ha, single-stem pruning

Optimal altitude is given as a sliding band, because the same tree wants different elevations depending on how far it sits from the equator:¹

	Latitude	Optimal altitude
1	5°N–5°S	1,000–1,600 m
2	5–15°N and 5–15°S	700–1,300 m
3	Above 15°N / 15°S	400–1,000 m

The catalogue’s own one-line summary is: “High yielding plant adapted to medium altitudes. Resistant to coffee leaf rust and some nematodes.”¹

Three practical readings. “Nutrition requirement: high” plus 5,000–6,000 trees per hectare means this is an expensive tree to farm properly — it rewards farms with money for fertiliser. “Susceptible” to coffee berry disease matters less in Brazil, where that particular fungus is not present, than it would in East Africa. And most of Brazil’s coffee sits well above 15° south, where the catalogue’s band drops to 400–1,000 m — which is why the phrase “medium altitude” attaches to this variety everywhere it is described.

What it is really called, and when it arrived

The variety carries several names in Brazilian paperwork — IAPAR 59, IPR 59, and Café IAPAR 59 — all referring to the same cultivar. IAPAR itself was folded into IDR-Paraná (Instituto de Desenvolvimento Rural do Paraná), so current Brazilian documents credit the newer institute as the variety’s official maintainer.⁴⁵

The catalogue gives no release year for it.¹ Brazilian sources do, and they do not entirely agree with each other.

To verify

The release, launch and registration dates could not be confirmed here. The research behind this note cites an IDR-Paraná technical sheet saying the variety was “recommended for planting from 1992,” a second official sheet saying 1993, an IDR-Paraná statement that it was commercially launched in 1993, and a Fundação Procafé record giving 1999 as the year of registration in Brazil’s national cultivar registry.⁴⁵⁶ Two of those pages could not be reached from here — the IDR-Paraná PDF host timed out and the Fundação Procafé cultivar page returned HTTP 404 on two URL forms. The World Coffee Research record leaves the release year blank.¹ So: early-1990s release is consistent across the secondary accounts, but no specific year on this page is verified, and the sources themselves split between 1992 and 1993.

To verify

The breeding trail is documented only in sources this note could not open. The cross is reported to have been made at CIFC in Oeiras, Portugal, between Villa Sarchi CIFC 971/10 and Timor Hybrid 832/2, under the CIFC designation H361; IAPAR is then said to have selected the progeny 75163-22 in Paraná and released it as IAPAR 59, after trials at Londrina, Loanda and Carlópolis.⁶ That account comes from a Brazilian trade magazine which returned HTTP 403 when fetched here. The parentage itself is confirmed by the catalogue and by this wiki’s CIFC note, which records 832/2 as the Sarchimor-side accession.¹ The accession numbers, the H361 label and the 75163-22 progeny number are not confirmed.

The rust question — where the sources disagree

This is the sharpest conflict on the page, and it is worth stating plainly rather than splitting the difference.

World Coffee Research rates IAPAR 59’s rust resistance “Intermediate” — the same rating it gives T5296 and Marsellesa, and a step below Parainema, the only Sarchimor rated “highly resistant.”¹ That is the rating this wiki’s Sarchimor note already records.

To verify

Brazilian breeder sources claim something much stronger, and it contradicts the catalogue. IAPAR’s own material is reported to describe “complete and durable resistance to coffee leaf rust,” sufficient to drop fungicide sprays for that disease entirely, and to claim resistance to around 30 known races of Hemileia vastatrix.⁴⁶ Neither page was reachable from here (timeout and HTTP 403 respectively). “Complete and durable” is not compatible with the catalogue’s “Intermediate.” Both readings can be partly true — a variety can hold up completely against the rust races present in Paraná in the 1990s and rate merely intermediate against a global panel decades later, which is exactly how introgressed resistance tends to erode. But do not state “complete rust resistance” as fact.

The nematode picture has the same shape. The catalogue is specific and narrow: resistant to Meloidogyne exigua, not resistant to Pratylenchus.¹ The research report adds a Fundação Procafé sheet with ratings against M. paranaensis and M. incognita as well, but reads them off an icon-based legend it could not fully resolve.⁵ Treat the catalogue’s two-line version as the verified one.

What it tastes like

The catalogue’s formal rating is “Low” quality potential at high altitude.¹ That is the bottom of a four-step scale, the same rating given to the early Catimor workhorses, and the only “Low” in the Sarchimor family — the other three catalogued selections all rate “Good.”⁷

Brazilian breeding sources are gentler, describing cup quality as similar to Catuaí and simply “good drink quality” — which is a fair description of most of Brazil’s commercial crop, and not a specialty claim.⁶

And then there is the competition result, which sits in flat contradiction to a “Low” rating.

The 2017 Cup of Excellence result

Here is what is verified, straight from the Alliance for Coffee Excellence’s own results page for Cup of Excellence Brazil Naturals 2017 — a primary auction record:²

	Rank	Farm	Producer	Score	Auction price
1	1A	Fazenda Camocim 2017	Henrique Leivas Sloper de Araujo	93.60	US$90.20/lb
2	1B	Fazenda Camocim 2017	Henrique Leivas Sloper de Araujo	93.60	US$80.30/lb
3	2A	Sítio Caminho da Serra 2017	Paulo Henrique Miranda	92.37	US$30.60/lb
4	2B	Sítio Caminho da Serra 2017	Paulo Henrique Miranda	92.37	US$35.20/lb
5	3A	Fazendas Klem 2017	Fazendas Klem	91.17	US$25.40/lb

Camocim Estate took both top slots at 93.60 points, and its winning lot cleared US$90.20 a pound — roughly three times what second place fetched.² Brazil ran two separate competitions that year, Naturals and Pulped Naturals; this is the Naturals result.⁸

The catch is the variety column.

The variety attribution is now on a primary record. ACE’s results table carries no variety column, but its farm-directory entry for the 93.60 lot does, and it reads “Catucai Açu - Iapar 59” — natural processed, 1,250–1,300 masl, Domingos Martins, Espírito Santo, on a 160-hectare property with 70 hectares under coffee, producer Henrique Leivas Sloper de Araujo, certified IBD organic, Demeter biodynamic and BSCA.³ The same directory records a second Camocim lot at 87.68 in Brazil 2019, also credited to Catucaí Açu–Iapar 59, pulped natural and grown at 980 m.⁹ So the score, rank, producer, price and variety are all confirmed by ACE. See Camocim Estate.

To verify

“Catucaí Açu” is not a registered cultivar name. No primary breeding source could be found for a sub-selection by that name — it appears in ACE’s producer-supplied farm copy and in seller descriptions, not in IAPAR or Fundação Procafé cultivar records.⁴⁶ The farm-directory entries are filled in by the entrant, not by a genetic test, so what is confirmed is that Camocim declared Iapar 59. A UK retailer’s blog post repeating the same attribution adds direct trade and flavour detail but is downstream of the same producer copy.¹⁰

The implication is worth spelling out: a variety the global catalogue rates “Low” in the cup, planted at 1,250 m and processed as a natural, scored 93.60 and outsold the rest of a national auction. Catalogue quality ratings describe a variety’s typical ceiling under typical handling. They are not a verdict on what a specific farm can do with it.

To verify

Conflicting descriptions of the plant and the cup circulate in trade sources. The retailer above gives flavour notes of plum, caramel, low acidity;¹⁰ a commercial varieties write-up repeats plum and caramel but adds that IAPAR 59 has “moderate yield,” “low cup profile,” “small beans” and suits low and medium altitudes.¹¹ The catalogue says bean size “Average” and yield “Medium,” and the Brazilian breeding sources claim beans slightly larger than Catuaí, around sieve 16, with yields 40% above Catuaí in the first two years.¹⁵⁶ These cannot all be right. The commercial write-up is a secondary seller page with no cupping data behind it.

Its role in later breeding

IAPAR 59’s most durable contribution may be as a parent rather than as a farm tree. It was crossed with Mundo Novo IAC 376-4 to produce IPR Alvorada, a dwarf Brazilian cultivar bred for high yield with rust resistance carried over from the Sarchimor side.¹² That is the standard use for this kind of material: a rust-resistant, high-yielding chassis that a breeder bolts cup quality back onto.

Why it matters

Most of the world’s rust-resistant varieties were bred for smallholders in Central America. IAPAR 59 was bred for Brazil — for dense commercial planting at 400–1,000 m in a country that grows more coffee than anywhere else, where the economics are volume, mechanisation and not spraying fungicide. On those terms it is exactly what it was meant to be, and the catalogue’s “Low” quality rating is close to beside the point.

What makes it interesting to specialty coffee is the awkward footnote: a 93.60-point, US$90-a-pound Cup of Excellence winner is recorded by ACE as this variety.²³ The Catimor note on this wiki records that no verified competition result exists for any Catimor. Parainema has six documented Cup of Excellence placings in the high 80s. So the family’s lowest-rated member holds its highest score — which says less about IAPAR 59 than about how little a catalogue rating can tell you about one farm, one altitude and one lot. Camocim Estate’s own follow-up makes the point twice over: the same farm, same declared variety, entered a pulped natural lot from a lower plot in 2019 and placed 21st at 87.68.⁹

Related

• Sarchimor — the family it belongs to, and where it sits against the other three named selections
• Villa Sarchi — the dwarf Bourbon mutation that is its Arabica parent
• Timor Hybrid — the Arabica × Robusta parent that carries the rust resistance
• Robusta — the second species behind that parent, and the original source of the resistance genes
• Marsellesa · Parainema — the Nicaraguan and Honduran Sarchimor selections
• Catimor — the sibling family built on Caturra, and the cautionary tale the Sarchimors were bred against
• Catuaí · Mundo Novo — the Brazilian commercial standards it was measured against and crossed with
• IPR Alvorada — the cultivar bred from it
• Coffee leaf rust — the disease the whole family exists to survive
• IAPAR · CIFC · Fundação Procafé · Instituto Agronômico — the institutes that made, released and catalogue it
• World Coffee Research — publisher of the variety catalogue every agronomic figure here comes from
• Brazil — the origin it was bred for
• Camocim Estate · Henrique Sloper — the farm and producer behind the 2017 competition lot
• Cup of Excellence · Alliance for Coffee Excellence · Green coffee auctions — the competition and auction records cited above
• Natural process — how the competition lot was processed
• Cupping · Coffee scoring · SCA cupping protocol — how the quality claims above would be settled
• Direct trade — how the Camocim lots reach roasters

Official links

• Official site — World Coffee Research variety record: IAPAR 59
• Official site — World Coffee Research variety catalogue
• Official site — Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Cup of Excellence results archive

The breeder’s own pages could not be confirmed from here: the IDR-Paraná technical-sheet host did not resolve, and the Fundação Procafé cultivar page returned HTTP 404 on both the English and Portuguese URL forms cited in the research behind this note.

Footnotes

1. World Coffee Research — IAPAR 59 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

2. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Cup of Excellence Brazil Naturals 2017 results ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — farm directory: Fazenda Camocim 2017, 93.60 — confirmed via WebFetch; ACE’s own record naming the variety as “Catucai Açu - Iapar 59” ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. IDR-Paraná — IPR 59 / Café IAPAR 59 technical sheet ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Fundação Procafé — Iapar 59 cultivar record ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. Revista Cafeicultura — Café Iapar 59 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

7. World Coffee Research — variety catalogue ↩

8. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — competition and auction results archive ↩

9. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — farm directory: Fazenda Camocim, 87.68 — confirmed via WebFetch; the Brazil 2019 pulped natural lot at 980 masl, same variety ↩ ↩²

10. Bella Barista — Iapar 59 ↩ ↩²

11. Gemini — Talking about rare varieties of Arabica ↩

12. IPR Alvorada — dwarf Arabica coffee cultivar with high yield (SciELO, Crop Breeding and Applied Biotechnology) ↩