Meet libex, the newly discovered hybrid that is climate resistant and could save coffee. Plus, Starbucks Korea faces backlash over a controversial promotional campaign, and a grab bag of coffee health news.
‘Researchers at Kew Gardens Just Found a Promising New Coffee Hybrid’ – via Sprudge
Coffee is a genetically complex plant, and some species are especially fragile in the face of climate change. Of the two most common coffee species, arabica is notoriously vulnerable to rising heat and drought, while robusta, often considered hardier than arabica, may be less resilient than first thought.
Researchers have explored alternative species like stenophylla and liberica, as well as new arabica varieties and hybrids, which are more robust in the face of temperature extremes. And now a new hybrid has joined the chat.
Researchers at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in the United Kingdom, led by Dr. Aaron Davis, have identified a new family of hybrids of the liberica and excelsa coffee species. The researchers hope that their discovery will offer farmers another climate-resilient coffee alternative to arabica.
Liberica and excelsa are coffee species that often hybridize when grown on the same farm. (It was once thought that excelsa was a variant of liberica, but last year Davis and his team showed that excelsa is a separate species.) Researchers identified the new hybrid by examining 113 different samples collected from three continents and published their findings in Scientific Reports. While farmers have long cultivated liberica and excelsa, as well as informal hybrids of the two, the study aimed to “verify and quantify” the hybridization for the first time.
The samples exhibited different traits depending on their origin, but all showed “overlapping values for key agronomic traits, including seed size and parchment thickness,” the authors wrote. Liberica cherries are larger and have a thicker skin than arabica. The plants are relatively low-yielding but more disease-resistant than arabica, and they grow better at lower elevations and in hotter weather.
Excelsa is higher-yielding but less resistant to disease, and it performs better at higher elevations. The new hybrid, which researchers proposed calling Coffea × libex, seems to have the best of both species.
The South India Coffee Company contributed to the study with samples and field expertise. In a press release, the company detailed some of the benefits of libex: its higher yield compared to liberica, its resistance to coffee leaf rust, and its climate resilience.
Another important element is taste. Liberica’s flavor profile can be “unfamiliar and challenging” to some coffee drinkers, SICC wrote. Others have described it as vegetal or savory. By comparison, the study authors describe libex as more balanced and accessible, although they note that a more rigorous sensory evaluation is needed.
Read more on the new libex coffee hybrid here.
‘Starbucks Korea Head Fired After ‘Tank Day’ Promotion Sparks Public Uproar’ – via Reuters
Starbucks Korea fired its CEO last week over a controversial promotional campaign that coincided with the anniversary of a brutal military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
On May 18, Starbucks Korea launched a campaign called “Tank Day” to promote a new line of large tumblers dubbed the Tank series due to their size. However, as Heejin Kim reports for Reuters, many Koreans saw the campaign as a reference to the Gwangju Uprising of 1980 against the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan.
The uprising also began on May 18, and in response, the military sent soldiers and tanks to suppress the protests. Hundreds were killed, and to this day, the final death toll is still unknown; Koreans commemorate the massacre each year on Democratization Movement Day.
The backlash to “Tank Day” was immediate. Critics called for a boycott of Starbucks Korea, with many customers canceling their app memberships and requesting refunds for prepaid gift cards. South Korean president Lee Jae Myung even weighed in, saying he was “enraged” by the campaign and demanded an apology from Starbucks on behalf of those killed during the uprising. The retail conglomerate Shinsegae Group, which operates Starbucks Korea, canceled the campaign the same day and fired its CEO for his role in the “inappropriate marketing.”
For the campaign, Starbucks Korea used the tagline “put it on the table with a sound of ‘Tak!’” This also struck a nerve with many Koreans, who felt it referenced another pro-democracy flashpoint. According to Korea JoongAng Daily, “tak” is a Korean word similar to “bang.” Park Jong-chul, a student protester, was killed by police during a prolonged interrogation in 1987. The police explanation at the time was that Park died of shock after an officer “struck a desk with a ‘tak.’” It was later revealed that authorities had tortured him, and his death helped spark the next stage of Korea’s pro-democracy movement.
Shinsegae Group chairman Chung Yong-jin apologized for the campaign, saying it had “deeply hurt the public, the bereaved families, and the victims of the May 18 demonstration.” In an email to Reuters, Starbucks Global said: “We sincerely apologize to the people of Gwangju, to those impacted by this tragedy, and to our customers and communities.”
Read the full story on the ‘Tank Day’ controversy here.
More News
‘U.S. Grocery Coffee Prices Hit All-Time Average High in April’ – via Daily Coffee News
‘World Coffee Research Highlights Progress in 2025 Annual Report’ – via Global Coffee Report
‘Ecotact Introduces TraceIQ for Green Coffee Shipment Tracking’ – via Daily Coffee News
The Week in Coffee Unionizing
A group of independent experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council sent a letter to Starbucks in March, urging the company to address its “alleged ongoing and widespread union-busting campaign” against Starbucks Workers United. The four experts are lawyers, professors, and activists who “are mandated to investigate and publicly raise human-rights concerns” on behalf of the U.N., Waylon Cunningham reports for Reuters.
In the letter, the group detailed allegations of “threats, harassment and intimidation against staff members associated with or campaigning for union activities” taken by Starbucks since 2021. The allegations include multiple instances in which management called the police on protests at Starbucks locations, as well as the company’s firing of union organizers in states across the U.S.
“We are gravely concerned that Starbucks’ alleged conduct, including but not limited to the reprisal measures taken against workers campaigning or expressing support for unionizing, may amount to violations of workers’ rights to freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association,” the group wrote.
In a statement to Reuters, Starbucks said that it is “actively engaging with the union in good faith.”
Is Coffee Good For You?
It was a mixed bag in terms of coffee health news this week. One study found that coffee could improve cognitive function in those in the early stages of Parkinson’s; another found that excessive coffee drinking could weaken bones later in life.
Let’s start with the good news: A small study from South Korea found that daily consumption was associated with improved executive function among those with early-stage Parkinson’s disease (PD).
For the study, published in the journal Parkinsonism & Related Disorders, 149 early-stage PD patients were administered various cognitive tests. Specifically, they used the Go/No-Go test, an assessment that measures impulsivity and the ability to suppress the urge to respond to prompts. For example, pressing a button when shown a “go” signal and not pressing it on “no-go.” The test repeats at faster speeds and in different orders, testing the participant’s ability to control their impulses.
Those who drank coffee performed better on the test than non-drinkers; those who consumed more than one cup per day performed best. “A potential association was observed between coffee consumption and specific executive functions in early PD,” the authors concluded. “Our findings suggest that while caffeine may correlate with certain cognitive benefits, these results require cautious interpretation and further validation in independent cohorts.”
Now to the not-so-good news: In Australia, researchers at Flinders University used a dataset that followed nearly 10,000 older women over the course of a decade to investigate coffee and tea’s impact on osteoporosis. The study, published in Nutrients, used self-reported dietary surveys to track coffee and tea intake and compared it with the participants’ bone mineral density (BMD), collected every two years.
BMD tests assess bone calcium and mineral content, which decrease with age. Those who regularly drank tea had slightly higher BMD than non-tea drinkers, while moderate coffee intake had no effect. However, drinking more than five cups of coffee per day was associated with lower BMD, the study found.
The study’s authors urged caution, as beverage intake was self-reported and their findings, while statistically significant, were relatively tentative. “Our results don’t mean you need to give up coffee or start drinking tea by the gallon,” co-author Enwu Liu said in a press release.
Beyond the Headlines
‘Five Major Takeaways From the 2026 London Coffee Festival’ by Claire Bullen
‘I Cannot Stop Thinking About This Trade Show Booth’ by Jordan Michelman
