DENVER — Coffee — America’s most popular beverage — could be in hot water, so to speak. Grown only in limited tropical locales around the globe, Coffea plants are vulnerable due to numerous factors: a lack of genetic diversity, increasingly extreme weather ranging from droughts to hurricanes and floods, as well as destructive pests and devastating agricultural diseases that threaten coffee crops.
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Sarada Krishnan, director of Horticulture and the Center for Global Initiatives at Denver Botanic Gardens, leads scientific research to ensure that coffee is still available for future generations to enjoy. Growing up in South India, Krishnan began drinking coffee from her family’s coffee plantations as a girl of 7 or 8 years…
