Do you start your day with a cup of coffee? A new study at Ohio State University hopes to predict how good those beans are before they’re roasted.
Devin Peterson, a distinguished professor at Ohio State's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, joined Morning Edition Host Stu Osborne to discuss the study.
Devin Peterson: The coffee industry is facing some challenges right now broadly. Coffee is a big industry in the U.S. We don't grow a lot of coffee, although areas like Hawaii grow coffee. Puerto Rico used to have some, at least a little less production today. But we do a lot of business in selling coffee, right? There have been a lot of challenges in the current growing environments. How do they allow enough development in these crops that they can still meet the demand, right, of the consumers broadly.
Stu Osborne: What qualities are you looking for in young coffee plants to ensure those beans will be such a high quality?
Devin Peterson: So it's interesting, right? Because if you look at agriculture, even just to think about the food production system in the U.S., it is really focused on more of, I would say, commodity-type structure where you're making it affordable (and) abundant, which are great things. Coffee is somewhat unique in that it also has to stand out for its quality, how people enjoy the experience. If you think about Hawaii, the coffee has to be very competitive from a quality perspective because you would say just a different scale, cost of production there and among other aspects. But probably I'd say coffee is somewhat in the category that higher quality is desired because it affects really the whole value chain, from what the farmers paid all the way to what the consumer will pay for their coffee as well as enjoy.
Research by Devin Peterson and the team at the Flavor Research and Education Center could predict coffee flavor before beans are roasted. pic.twitter.com/68hCMJTf4N
— Ohio State - CFAES (@CFAES_OSU) October 28, 2026
Stu Osborne: What advances are you hoping to uncover during this study?
Devin Peterson: The central thesis of it is that we could help predict quality much earlier in the production cycle. So, for new coffee trees, it takes about five years for them to develop and then create these coffee beans so they're more robust and sort of what is needed today, but what they can't do. We're very good at helping these materials become more robust and resilient, you'd say, to insects, changing in weather patterns and rain and whatnot, but they have limited knowledge of how do I make sure that they also contain or bring in that quality component that is really important for consumers. Our goal is to be able to take the green bean and really understand from that compositionally green bean of when I go to roast it, how it's going to develop into that quality, the coffee quality that the consumers expect.
Stu Osborne: How long do you expect this study to last?
Devin Peterson: This is actually probably a four or five-year study. It is quite complicated because a lot of coffee quality comes from roasting. And so looking at the green beans is sort of saying, what is the composition I need that after I roast it, I'm going to get that quality that I enjoy? It's not just understanding what's important for the consumer, which is still not, I would say there's still limited knowledge there and more needs to be advanced and will be with this project. But now connecting it back from my cup of coffee all the way to this green bean that hasn't even been roasted. So it's quite complicated. And I could easily see this taking four or five years.
