Pacas
Pacas is a naturally short version of Bourbon. One gene changed in a Bourbon field in El Salvador, the tree stopped growing tall, and Salvadoran farmers kept it — because a short tree can be planted closer together and picked without a ladder.
It is the same accident that produced Caturra in Brazil and Villa Sarchi in Costa Rica. World Coffee Research names all three in one breath: “Pacas is a natural mutation of Bourbon, similar to Caturra in Brazil and Villa Sarchi in Costa Rica… a single-gene mutation that causes the plant to grow smaller (Dwarf/Compactism). This is it’s chief virtue: the plant’s small size leads to higher potential yields and the possibility of placing plants closer together to increase total fruit production on a farm” (World Coffee Research — Pacas, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch).
Two things make Pacas matter beyond being a third example of the same mutation. It is about a quarter of everything El Salvador grows, and it is one half of Pacamara — the deliberately bred giant-bean variety that dominates the Salvadoran Cup of Excellence.
Where it came from
World Coffee Research states it directly: the variety “was discovered in 1949 on a farm owned by the Pacas family in the Santa Ana region of El Salvador. In 1960, the Salvadoran Institute for Coffee Research (ISIC) began a program of pedigree selection (selection of individual plants through successive generations) for Pacas” (same source, confirmed via WebFetch).
Pedigree selection is worth unpacking, because it is the step that turns a lucky tree into a plantable variety. A single mutant plant is one plant. Taking its seed, growing it out, keeping only the offspring that stayed short and cupped well, and repeating that for generations is how you get a population that reliably breeds true. Pacas took eleven years to go from found to formally worked on, and that 1960 date is a breeding start, not a discovery — the same distinction this wiki draws for Caturra, where 1937 is often misreported as the discovery year.
From El Salvador it went next door. Pacas “is also grown in Honduras, where it was introduced by IHCAFE in 1974” — IHCAFE being the Honduran national coffee institute (same source).
To verify
The discovery date is a four-way mess, and the wiki takes 1949 because World Coffee Research does. The other versions in circulation:
- 1956, with the finder named as Fernando Alberto Pacas Figueroa (Perfect Daily Grind, accessed 2026-07-23).
- The 1960s, “stumbled upon by the Pacas family along the Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountain range,” with a separate note that a new, high-yielding, differently shaped tree had already been observed on the San Rafael farm in the 1930s (Mercanta, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch).
- The 1940s, discovered by the great-grandfather of producer Maria Pacas (Typica, accessed 2026-07-23, cited via the research report only).
A first sighting in the 1930s, formal recognition around 1949, and institutional selection from 1960 would reconcile most of this, but no source actually makes that argument — it is a guess, and it is written here as one. Note also that World Coffee Research says only “a farm owned by the Pacas family”; the specific naming of Finca San Rafael comes from trade sources (Ozone Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23, cited via the research report only), not the catalogue.
To verify
Nobody agrees on the first name of the man it is named after. One trade source says the farm owner was Don Francisco Pacas and then immediately concedes that “according to another version, his name was Fernando” (BrewLogy, accessed 2026-07-23, cited via the research report only); Perfect Daily Grind gives Fernando Alberto Pacas Figueroa. The catalogue names no individual at all. Don’t attach a given name to this variety.
To verify
The University of Florida connection is trade-sourced only. Two independent trade sources credit the formal scientific identification of Pacas as a new Bourbon mutant to American researchers: Mercanta names Dr. William Cowgill of the University of Florida, saying the variety was “named Pacas thanks to observations by Dr. William Cowgill” (Mercanta, confirmed via WebFetch), and Perfect Daily Grind attributes the Bourbon-mutation finding to “research conducted by scientists of the University of Florida” (accessed 2026-07-23). No underlying paper, herbarium record or institutional page was located, and World Coffee Research credits no individual. Treat Cowgill as a well-repeated attribution, not a documented one.
What the plant is like
Every figure below is from the World Coffee Research variety catalogue entry for Pacas (accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch).
| Trait | Pacas |
|---|---|
| Genetic group | Bourbon–Typica group (Bourbon related) |
| Breeder | Instituto Salvadoreño de Investigaciones del Café (ISIC) |
| Stature | Dwarf / compact |
| Leaf tip colour | Green |
| Bean size | Average |
| Yield potential | Medium |
| Nutrition requirement | Medium |
| First production | Year 3 after planting |
| Planting density | 5,000–6,000 plants/ha (single-stem pruning) |
| Ripening | Average |
| Cherry-to-green-bean outturn | Average |
| Optimal altitude | Above 1,600 m within 5° of the equator; above 1,300 m at 5–15° latitude; above 1,000 m beyond 15° |
| Coffee leaf rust | Low resistance / susceptible |
| Nematodes | Susceptible |
| Coffee berry disease | Susceptible |
| Quality potential at high altitude | Good |
Read that table next to Caturra’s and the resemblance is almost eerie: same dwarf stature, same 5,000–6,000 plants per hectare, same year-three first crop, same average bean, same rust problem, same “Good” quality rating. The one real difference is nutrition requirement — Caturra is rated high, Pacas medium. Packed at the same density, Pacas is the less hungry tree, which matters most on farms that can’t spend freely on fertiliser.
The rust line is the one that costs money. Low resistance to Coffee leaf rust is what Pacas inherited from Bourbon along with the sweetness, and it is the reason Salvadoran and Honduran farms lost so heavily when rust swept Central America from around 2008. Trade sources phrase it more starkly than the catalogue does — “vulnerable to all major coffee diseases” (Proud Mary, accessed 2026-07-23, cited via the research report only) — which is consistent with the catalogue rating three separate diseases as susceptible.
One practical note on the altitude row. El Salvador sits at roughly 14° north, so the middle band applies: the catalogue’s threshold for Salvadoran Pacas is above 1,300 m.
To verify
A commonly quoted altitude band contradicts the catalogue. One roaster guide gives Pacas an “optimal altitude” of 1,000–1,700 m (Ozone Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23), and another puts its best expression around 5,200 ft (≈1,585 m), dropping toward ~3,200 ft (≈975 m) further from the equator (BrewLogy, accessed 2026-07-23) — both cited via the research report only. World Coffee Research publishes no single band; it publishes a floor that rises as you approach the equator. A ceiling of 1,700 m is not something the catalogue says at all. The same source also claims Pacas “is able to survive both a drop in temperature and heat and even a lack of water”; no agronomic study supporting that drought and heat tolerance was found, and the catalogue makes no such claim.
A quarter of El Salvador
The single most-quoted number about Pacas turns out to be the one that holds up. Pacas “is still widely grown in the country; it accounts for about 25% of the country’s coffee production” (World Coffee Research, confirmed via WebFetch). Trade sources repeat the figure (Xliii Coffee; Ozone Coffee, both accessed 2026-07-23), but the catalogue is where it originates, and that is a technical reference rather than marketing copy.
Note what kind of number it is: a share of production, not a national statistic from a coffee board. It is the industry’s working estimate, and no Salvadoran government census confirming it was located here.
Seed stock, the catalogue adds, “is available from Procafe” — the Salvadoran coffee foundation that succeeded ISIC. As recorded on this wiki’s Pacamara note, Procafe’s own domain failed to resolve when checked on 2026-07-23, so that seed channel could not be verified as currently operating.
What it tastes like
The formal answer is one word. World Coffee Research rates Pacas’s quality potential at high altitude as “Good” — the same rung it gives Caturra, one below the “Very Good” it gives Bourbon, and two below the “Exceptional” it gives Geisha and Pacamara. On a wiki full of trophy varieties, Pacas is rated a workhorse.
That rating is worth sitting with, because it explains the variety’s whole commercial position. Pacas is not what a Salvadoran farm enters in a competition; it is what a Salvadoran farm grows. The competition block is Pacamara or Geisha. Pacas is the quarter of the crop underneath.
To verify
There are no cupping scores for Pacas here, and the flavour notes are trade prose. Roaster descriptions run to “balanced, medium body, gentle acidity, caramel and chocolate sweetness, stone fruit, clean finish” (Ozone Coffee) and “balanced acidity and bitterness, very slight sweetness and hints of cocoa” (BrewLogy), both accessed 2026-07-23 and cited via the research report only. No SCA, CQI or Cup of Excellence score for any Pacas lot was found, and none should be invented. The only defensible sensory statement on this page is the catalogue’s “Good.”
It does not show up at auction
This is a genuine finding rather than a gap, and it is worth stating plainly: Pacas is absent from El Salvador’s Cup of Excellence results.
The Alliance for Coffee Excellence’s published results for El Salvador 2023, 2024 and 2025 were each checked for any lot listing Pacas — alone or inside a blend — and there are none in any of the three years (ACE — El Salvador 2023, 2024, 2025, all accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch). The variety fields in those tables are full of Pacamara, Geisha, Kenya SL28, Bourbon and blends. Its own parent variety is missing.
That is three consecutive years of one national competition, not a global search, so read the scope honestly. But it is the right competition to check — El Salvador is where a quarter of the crop is Pacas — and the absence is consistent across all three. Pacas is a production variety, not an auction variety. Its route to the top of the score sheet runs through its child.
Its most important descendant
Pacas is one of the two parents of Pacamara, crossed with Maragogipe — the giant-bean Typica mutation from Brazil — by ISIC. World Coffee Research records the Pacamara parentage as “Pacas x Maragogipe” and places the result in the Bourbon–Typica group, which is exactly what a Bourbon mutant crossed with a Typica mutant should produce (see Pacamara, where the record is set out in full).
What Pacas contributed to that cross is legible in the table above: a short, densely plantable tree with Bourbon cup quality behind it. Maragogipe supplied the enormous bean and a terrible yield. Pacamara is the attempt to keep the first without inheriting all of the second — and it is why a variety rated merely “Good” sits behind a variety rated “Exceptional.”
There is a footnote to that. Pacamara does not breed true, and one of the two things its offspring drift back toward is Pacas. A farmer saving Pacamara seed can end up with something closer to the short Salvadoran parent than to the giant-bean hybrid they planted.
Why it matters
Pacas is the clearest case in this wiki of a variety that is economically enormous and reputationally invisible. It feeds a quarter of a national crop and has no competition record. It is rated “Good” and has never been fashionable. Almost everything written about it in the trade is really about its child.
It also completes an argument the Bourbon note starts. Bourbon threw the same dwarfing mutation three separate times, in three separate countries, and every time a farming community grabbed it within a generation — Caturra in Brazil, Pacas in El Salvador, Villa Sarchi in Costa Rica. That is not coincidence about coffee genetics; it is a statement about what farmers wanted. Given the same accident three times, they made the same choice three times: take the short tree, plant it tight, accept the rust.
Related
- Bourbon — the parent it is a dwarf mutation of
- Caturra · Villa Sarchi — the same single-gene dwarfing mutation, found independently in Brazil and Costa Rica
- Instituto Salvadoreño de Investigaciones del Café — the state institute that ran its pedigree selection from 1960, now defunct
- Pacamara — the ISIC cross of Pacas × Maragogipe, and the reason most people have heard the name
- Maragogipe — the giant-bean Typica mutation on the other side of that cross
- Pacas family — the Salvadoran growers whose farm it was found on and who it is named after
- Typica — the other founding lineage, reached through Pacamara
- Coffee leaf rust — the disease it has little defence against
- World Coffee Research — keeper of the catalogue every agronomic figure here comes from
- Cup of Excellence · Alliance for Coffee Excellence — the competition whose three most recent Salvadoran results contain no Pacas lot
- Geisha — what Salvadoran farms enter instead
- Cupping · Coffee scoring — how a cup rating like “Good” gets produced
- Catimor · Sarchimor — the bred families built to fix the rust weakness Pacas still carries
Official links
- Official site — World Coffee Research variety record: Pacas
- Official site — Café Pacas — the Salvadoran family business descended from the growers the variety is named after (confirmed via WebFetch 2026-07-23)
The breeding institute has no reachable official presence. ISIC was folded into El Salvador’s later coffee bodies, and both procafe.com.sv and csc.gob.sv failed to load when checked on 2026-07-23 (see Pacamara). Treat the World Coffee Research record as the authoritative public entry for the variety.
Sources
- World Coffee Research — Pacas — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch; source of every agronomic figure, the 1949 discovery, the 1960 ISIC selection programme, the 25% production share, and the 1974 IHCAFE introduction to Honduras)
- World Coffee Research — Pacamara — accessed 2026-07-23 (parentage “Pacas x Maragogipe”; see Pacamara)
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Cup of Excellence El Salvador 2023 results — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch; checked for Pacas lots, none found)
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Cup of Excellence El Salvador 2024 results — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch; checked for Pacas lots, none found)
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Cup of Excellence El Salvador 2025 results — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch; checked for Pacas lots, none found)
- Mercanta — Delving into Café Pacas, El Salvador — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch; source of the 1960s date, the 1930s San Rafael observation, and the Dr. William Cowgill attribution)
- Café Pacas — official site — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch)
- Perfect Daily Grind — Interview: What’s So Special About Pacamara? — accessed 2026-07-23 (source of the 1956 date, the name Fernando Alberto Pacas Figueroa, and the University of Florida attribution)
- Ozone Coffee — Pacas coffee varietal: origins, flavour and growing guide — accessed 2026-07-23 (cited via the research report only)
- Xliii Coffee — Pacas coffee variety: the advantage of a single-gene Bourbon mutation — accessed 2026-07-23 (cited via the research report only)
- Proud Mary Coffee — Pacas coffee variety — accessed 2026-07-23 (cited via the research report only)
- BrewLogy — Pacas coffee beans: origin story and taste profile — accessed 2026-07-23 (cited via the research report only; source of the Don Francisco / Fernando name conflict and the unverified drought-tolerance claim)
- Sweet Maria’s coffee library — Pacas — accessed 2026-07-23 (cited via the research report only)
- Typica — Love is Always Close By: Café Pacas — accessed 2026-07-23 (cited via the research report only; source of the 1940s great-grandfather version)