Wake up and smell the ‘sustainable’ coffee produced in Finnish lab – The Peninsula Qatar

Wake up and smell the ‘sustainable’ coffee produced in Finnish lab – The Peninsula Qatar

HELSINKI - With climate change threatening traditional coffee farming, Finnish scientists say they have produced coffee from cell cultures with an aroma and taste resembling the real thing.

The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland may have come up with a more sustainable alternative to growing coffee beans by floating cell cultures in bio-reactors filled with a nutrient medium used to make various animal- and plant-based products.

Heikki Aisala, the VTT researcher in charge of evaluating the process, said cups of cellular coffee probably could not pass standard taste tests just yet, but had lots of potential for a multi-billion-dollar global industry.