9 ms·

Sustainable coffee grown in Finland with cellular agriculture

161 points by mjul 5y ago

eurasiantiger 5y ago
This is not that surprising. Most of the psychoactive Harmala alkaloids in coffee are formed during roasting; typically by pyrolytic breakdown and cyclization of tryptophan. So, naturally, if the psychoactive effects are the same, the taste will be perceived as the same.
- 0_____0 5y ago
  Sorry, this is fascinating but I'm not finding the info I want to via search. What alkaloids do you mean? I'm guessing not just caffeine?
  - eurasiantiger 5y ago
    Harmala alkaloids, most abundantly harman and norharman.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "So, naturally, if the psychoactive effects are the same, the taste will be perceived as the same." I have no idea about the rest of your statement, but of all the substances I know, taste and psychoactive effect are not at all the same. They maybe influence each other, yes, but the sensoric taste is a different input than the internal effects of the stimulant.
  - eurasiantiger 5y ago
    IIRC it has been shown that all taste preferences are acquired based on individual neurophysiological responses to taste stimuli; in other words, internal effects dictate external preferences.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      Where was this shown? No doubt there is influence, but on the first time use, flavor comes before the effect.
      - eurasiantiger 5y ago
        It was a study in a respectable journal, but unfortunately I cannot recall more. Obviously one cannot have a preference for something they haven’t had.
        hutzlibu 5y ago
        But isn't then the "aquired taste" linked to that specific sensory input? So even though your brain likes substance x in the new coffee - it cannot connect it when drinking something that tastes different on first try, even though might have the same effect.
        eurasiantiger 5y ago
        That’s the thing—taste is intimately linked with effect. Every coffee drinker will notice if someone switches brands on them. That’s also why people with certain CYP3A4 variants dislike the taste of CYP3A4-inhibiting foods such as grapefruit, and people with certain variants absolutely love them. CYP3A4 is a liver enzyme responsible for metabolising human sex hormones, as well as most pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, including caffeine.
        eurasiantiger 5y ago
        Here’s a source clearly demonstrating that taste has not been selected for in our evolution, but effect on CYP3A4 has: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12862-019-1366-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12862-019-1366-7
    - andi999 5y ago
      So that is the thing called 'acquired taste'?
0_____0 5y ago
Big if true. Coffee is one of the world's most traded commodities by value, and the sourcing ethics are often pretty shaky. I think it's sort of funny that they called out the flavor as tasting like "ordinary coffee," since people in my experience are extremely fussy about their brew. By using bioreactor output, they're starting with something like a powder of plant cells, and finding a way to roast it -- this seems like it would create quite a different result to whole-bean roasting, I am very curious what kind of parameters they will have to adjust with the coffee cells (genetic modification to increase certain alkaloids, oils, etc?) and roasting process. edit: I think it's extremely funny that my comment about people being fussy about coffee has inspired a whole series of replies with opinions about coffee, as well as opinions of other people's opinions
- paavohtl 5y ago
  > since people in my experience are extremely fussy about their brew Finns drink the most coffee per capita in the world [1] but that coffee tends to be of a pretty low quality. For some people "good coffee" means it has been roasted so dark that it mostly tastes bitter and burnt. Other people don't really care what the coffee tastes like, as long as it's black (and they put so much milk in it that it mostly tastes of milk) and warm-ish. So it is entirely possible the scientists conducting this experiments aren't the best at judging the actual quality of the coffee. [1] https://www.universitymagazine.ca/countries-that-consume-the-most-coffee-2020/ https://www.universitymagazine.ca/countries-that-consume-the...
  - eurasiantiger 5y ago
    Since coffee contains a large amount of MAOA inhibitors, the difference in taste preference can be explained by different MAOA variable number tandem repeat genotypes in the population. From these, MAOA-LPR is the most widely studied, and has been shown to be connected to criminality and violent behavior—especially if paired with childhood maltreatment, which tends to change the activity of MAOA by methylation, which is a type of heritable epigenetic modification.
    - 5y ago
jjmellon 5y ago
You have to laugh at the obligatory time-to-market estimates in these lab-grown food articles: "I estimate we are only four years away from ramping up production and having regulatory approval in place." It would be interesting to see what estimate was provided in the 1974 article referenced in the piece.
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  Not only the science may be the barrier, but also lobbyists - if coffee plantations start paying for spreading ill rumours aka you'll grow 3rd leg from lab coffee etc.
rapsey 5y ago
Funny it is Finland to come up with this. Since they are known for having god-awful coffee: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9bqiil/macrons_reaction_to_finnish_coffee/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9bqiil/macrons_reac...
- Tuna-Fish 5y ago
  That's clearly part of our competitive advantage here. Because initial bioreactor coffee is probably worse than naturally grown varieties, you need a market that will accept that before you can get the kind of scale that will drive future improvement. Or something.
  - darthrupert 5y ago
    You would think that, but the problem is that Finns like their coffee the way it is.
temp00345 5y ago
I'm curious about several things: - does this process require expensive equipment ? - I assume you can apply this process to other cells/substances - cocoa ? coca ? tobacco ? oranges ? potatoes ? - if equipment became cheaper, could we envision people having a device for cellular agriculture at home?
- vletal 5y ago
  I would guess that it depends on the final product. This works for coffee because it gets grinded to a fine powder. Cocoa might work as well, tobacco for e-smokig, etc.
- hybrid_cluster 5y ago
  - Yes, doing this at a meaningful scale will require large bioreactors with a price tag of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. You will need LOTS of those reactors to get production beyond 1% of the world's current coffee consumption. - With all of these, one has to ask what the point is if the bioreactor inputs are sugar (from plants) and other nutrients. If you want sustainability benefits for X where X = plant-based product, you're probably better off improving the current agricultural practices of growing X rather than growing X in a bioreactor. - That's one of the loftier visions in biotech: decentralized manufacturing of basically anything. Anything along the lines of a convenient personal bioreactor currently seems like it might as well be a century away or more, but I'd certainly be an early adopter:)
hybrid_cluster 5y ago
> this project has been part of our overall endeavor to develop the biotechnological production of daily and familiar commodities that are conventionally produced by agriculture. I'm afraid I have to call BS. The nutrient medium used to feed the cell cultures will contain glucose or sucrose most likely from industrially-grown corn or sugarcane as a carbon source and other nutrients. I.e. in this case biotech isn't getting rid of an agricultural production process and magically replacing it with something sustainable - it's simply shifting the agricultural supply chain more upstream and out of view. Could it still be more sustainable compared to traditional coffee growing? I doubt it very much given all the input required to run commercial-scale bioreactors. Those things are energy intensive, produce waste water, and require complex nutrient broths and sterility. If you're claiming sustainability benefits in such a fuzzy situation, at least have an LCA to back up the claims. What about commercial feasibility? Extremely unlikely. Most if not all of the dealbreakers recently outlined in the context of commercial-scale lab-grown meat will apply here too [0]. But perhaps they can bioengineer some novel coffee characteristics unobtainable otherwise and sell it for $500 a cup. [0] https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/ https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca...
- thatcat 5y ago
  The PRL-4 media referenced is mostly the same macro and micronutrients that all plants need plus a small amount of sucrose (30 g/L) with 10% coconut milk added.
  - hybrid_cluster 5y ago
    Unfortunately, small amount of sugar = even smaller amount of useful product. I.e. for all we know the yields/cell densities (not reported) are so low that you need more land to grow sugarcane and coconut trees than to grow the amount of coffea plants needed for a similar amount coffee.
    - wbl 5y ago
      European sugar is from sugarbeet.
thatcat 5y ago
The paper referenced was written in 1974 and concludes with "The typical aromatic characteristics of roasted coffee can be obtained from roasted coffee cells which have been derived from cultures maintained in active culture at least one year. Cell populations eventually appear to lose their ability to produce coffee precursors. The reason for this coffee culture roasting aroma instability is unknown although one obvious explanation could be cell selection from an initial possible heterogeneous cell population..." I wonder what changes have been made in this iteration of research or if there has even been any improvement.
arthur_sav 5y ago
> Sustainable coffee Is this code word for "it's gonna be trash"?
- darthrupert 5y ago
  Not necessarily, rather it means at least double the price. Obviously, since veing sustainable and fair is always more expensive.
- tomtimtall 5y ago
  Honestly curious, where in the world do you live? Equating sustainable with lower quality is really odd to me and I don’t think anywhere at least in Northern Europe. If companies are producing just to get the lowest cost, it ends up being trash. Whenever anyone aims for sustainable products it’s obvious it will come at a higher price and quality becomes essential. That’s at least wha we see in all the sustainable products here
  - arthur_sav 5y ago
    Sweden. We have replaced all our produce with lab grown GMOs with no taste what so ever.
    - corroclaro 5y ago
      Ridiculous. The aspect of being genetically modified or not has by itself no influence on parameters of taste. At the local supermarket, you will be hard pressed to find "lab grown GMOs" in any produce section - most of it is grown in southern Sweden using traditional high yield crops (that may taste like nothing for reasons of production). The Swedish Food Agency[1] states that there are very few genetically modified products on the market at all. 1. https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/livsmedel-och-innehall/genmodifierad-mat-gmo https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/livsmedel-och-innehall/genmo...
      - arthur_sav 5y ago
        It must be my imagination then. Most of the produce in Sweden is imported. I do love my seasonal berries though, they taste great. Everything else, from tomatoes to letuce/cucumbers and other daily produce taste like nothing. You can try to refute that but it's a fact. I've lived in the Mediterranean so i have something to compare against. It's not normal to leave an apple on the counter and look the same after a month.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
It would be more sustainable if the poor countries that grow coffee would also be the ones that profit from it. As it is the big coffee factories are all in the rich West.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  Almost as if slavery is still very much a thing. Said poor countries are exactly where the do called west wants them to be. Do the Swiss grow coco? No, they buy it for peanuts, add some milk and sugar, then sell the final product for at least a modest profit. I wish it was easy to support the people doing the actual work but how? Supporting native brands? Sure but how I know who controls the company and if they are any better than the exploiter I am trying to avoid?
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    Look into the Specialty Coffee Association and roastmagazine.com/dailycoffeenews/. Also look at roast.com for an example. (I’m not affiliated.)
Protostome 5y ago
I don't think that growing coffee from cells will be scalable. It suffers the same problems that the cultured meat industry suffers. Ultimately, the most cost-effective (energy and scalability-wise) production method is synthesizing the aromatic molecules directly without going through cell cultures.
- patall 5y ago
  There a very different techniques of cell culture. For cultured meat for example, the texture is very important which makes it expensive as you have to grow large groups of cells. If that is not necessary here, it will be much cheaper. An example: Quorn, grown in bioreactors since 1985. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn
- Jensson 5y ago
  Animal cells are very hard to keep alive since they are used to having blood and oxygen constantly pumping, that makes them expensive to farm. Plant cells on the other hand are very robust and survives harsh conditions, they are way cheaper to cultivate. So if anything is worth artificial cultivation like this, it is plants like Coffee where the part we eat is a very small part of the whole plant. Then we can skip the rest of the coffee plant and just grow the beans.
hahamrfunnyguy 5y ago
I've recently started making dandelion coffee, which is prepared by chopping up the roots and roasting them. It tastes similar to coffee. It has nutty, roasty and flowery flavors. I'd say it's less complex than a quality roasted coffee, but it has a nice flavor. It doesn't have any unpleasant flavor like really cheap coffees (Maxwell House, Chase and Sanborn, Folgers, etc). I think if you gave most people this and told them it was coffee, they wouldn't argue with you.
sleepysysadmin 5y ago
Has anyone tried to grow their own arabica coffee tree in a growtent at home?

161 points by mjul 5y ago

This is not that surprising. Most of the psychoactive Harmala alkaloids in coffee are formed during roasting; typically by pyrolytic breakdown and cyclization of tryptophan. So, naturally, if the psychoactive effects are the same, the taste will be perceived as the same.

0_____0 5y ago
Sorry, this is fascinating but I'm not finding the info I want to via search. What alkaloids do you mean? I'm guessing not just caffeine?
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  Harmala alkaloids, most abundantly harman and norharman.
hutzlibu 5y ago
"So, naturally, if the psychoactive effects are the same, the taste will be perceived as the same." I have no idea about the rest of your statement, but of all the substances I know, taste and psychoactive effect are not at all the same. They maybe influence each other, yes, but the sensoric taste is a different input than the internal effects of the stimulant.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  IIRC it has been shown that all taste preferences are acquired based on individual neurophysiological responses to taste stimuli; in other words, internal effects dictate external preferences.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Where was this shown? No doubt there is influence, but on the first time use, flavor comes before the effect.
    - eurasiantiger 5y ago
      It was a study in a respectable journal, but unfortunately I cannot recall more. Obviously one cannot have a preference for something they haven’t had.
      - hutzlibu 5y ago
        But isn't then the "aquired taste" linked to that specific sensory input? So even though your brain likes substance x in the new coffee - it cannot connect it when drinking something that tastes different on first try, even though might have the same effect.
        eurasiantiger 5y ago
        That’s the thing—taste is intimately linked with effect. Every coffee drinker will notice if someone switches brands on them. That’s also why people with certain CYP3A4 variants dislike the taste of CYP3A4-inhibiting foods such as grapefruit, and people with certain variants absolutely love them. CYP3A4 is a liver enzyme responsible for metabolising human sex hormones, as well as most pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, including caffeine.
        eurasiantiger 5y ago
        Here’s a source clearly demonstrating that taste has not been selected for in our evolution, but effect on CYP3A4 has: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12862-019-1366-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12862-019-1366-7
  - andi999 5y ago
    So that is the thing called 'acquired taste'?

0_____0 5y ago

Big if true. Coffee is one of the world's most traded commodities by value, and the sourcing ethics are often pretty shaky. I think it's sort of funny that they called out the flavor as tasting like "ordinary coffee," since people in my experience are extremely fussy about their brew. By using bioreactor output, they're starting with something like a powder of plant cells, and finding a way to roast it -- this seems like it would create quite a different result to whole-bean roasting, I am very curious what kind of parameters they will have to adjust with the coffee cells (genetic modification to increase certain alkaloids, oils, etc?) and roasting process. edit: I think it's extremely funny that my comment about people being fussy about coffee has inspired a whole series of replies with opinions about coffee, as well as opinions of other people's opinions

paavohtl 5y ago
> since people in my experience are extremely fussy about their brew Finns drink the most coffee per capita in the world [1] but that coffee tends to be of a pretty low quality. For some people "good coffee" means it has been roasted so dark that it mostly tastes bitter and burnt. Other people don't really care what the coffee tastes like, as long as it's black (and they put so much milk in it that it mostly tastes of milk) and warm-ish. So it is entirely possible the scientists conducting this experiments aren't the best at judging the actual quality of the coffee. [1] https://www.universitymagazine.ca/countries-that-consume-the-most-coffee-2020/ https://www.universitymagazine.ca/countries-that-consume-the...
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  Since coffee contains a large amount of MAOA inhibitors, the difference in taste preference can be explained by different MAOA variable number tandem repeat genotypes in the population. From these, MAOA-LPR is the most widely studied, and has been shown to be connected to criminality and violent behavior—especially if paired with childhood maltreatment, which tends to change the activity of MAOA by methylation, which is a type of heritable epigenetic modification.
  - 5y ago

jjmellon 5y ago

You have to laugh at the obligatory time-to-market estimates in these lab-grown food articles: "I estimate we are only four years away from ramping up production and having regulatory approval in place." It would be interesting to see what estimate was provided in the 1974 article referenced in the piece.

intricatedetail 5y ago
Not only the science may be the barrier, but also lobbyists - if coffee plantations start paying for spreading ill rumours aka you'll grow 3rd leg from lab coffee etc.

rapsey 5y ago

Funny it is Finland to come up with this. Since they are known for having god-awful coffee: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9bqiil/macrons_reaction_to_finnish_coffee/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9bqiil/macrons_reac...

Tuna-Fish 5y ago
That's clearly part of our competitive advantage here. Because initial bioreactor coffee is probably worse than naturally grown varieties, you need a market that will accept that before you can get the kind of scale that will drive future improvement. Or something.
- darthrupert 5y ago
  You would think that, but the problem is that Finns like their coffee the way it is.

temp00345 5y ago

I'm curious about several things: - does this process require expensive equipment ? - I assume you can apply this process to other cells/substances - cocoa ? coca ? tobacco ? oranges ? potatoes ? - if equipment became cheaper, could we envision people having a device for cellular agriculture at home?

vletal 5y ago
I would guess that it depends on the final product. This works for coffee because it gets grinded to a fine powder. Cocoa might work as well, tobacco for e-smokig, etc.
hybrid_cluster 5y ago
- Yes, doing this at a meaningful scale will require large bioreactors with a price tag of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. You will need LOTS of those reactors to get production beyond 1% of the world's current coffee consumption. - With all of these, one has to ask what the point is if the bioreactor inputs are sugar (from plants) and other nutrients. If you want sustainability benefits for X where X = plant-based product, you're probably better off improving the current agricultural practices of growing X rather than growing X in a bioreactor. - That's one of the loftier visions in biotech: decentralized manufacturing of basically anything. Anything along the lines of a convenient personal bioreactor currently seems like it might as well be a century away or more, but I'd certainly be an early adopter:)

hybrid_cluster 5y ago

> this project has been part of our overall endeavor to develop the biotechnological production of daily and familiar commodities that are conventionally produced by agriculture. I'm afraid I have to call BS. The nutrient medium used to feed the cell cultures will contain glucose or sucrose most likely from industrially-grown corn or sugarcane as a carbon source and other nutrients. I.e. in this case biotech isn't getting rid of an agricultural production process and magically replacing it with something sustainable - it's simply shifting the agricultural supply chain more upstream and out of view. Could it still be more sustainable compared to traditional coffee growing? I doubt it very much given all the input required to run commercial-scale bioreactors. Those things are energy intensive, produce waste water, and require complex nutrient broths and sterility. If you're claiming sustainability benefits in such a fuzzy situation, at least have an LCA to back up the claims. What about commercial feasibility? Extremely unlikely. Most if not all of the dealbreakers recently outlined in the context of commercial-scale lab-grown meat will apply here too [0]. But perhaps they can bioengineer some novel coffee characteristics unobtainable otherwise and sell it for $500 a cup. [0] https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/ https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca...

thatcat 5y ago
The PRL-4 media referenced is mostly the same macro and micronutrients that all plants need plus a small amount of sucrose (30 g/L) with 10% coconut milk added.
- hybrid_cluster 5y ago
  Unfortunately, small amount of sugar = even smaller amount of useful product. I.e. for all we know the yields/cell densities (not reported) are so low that you need more land to grow sugarcane and coconut trees than to grow the amount of coffea plants needed for a similar amount coffee.
  - wbl 5y ago
    European sugar is from sugarbeet.

thatcat 5y ago

The paper referenced was written in 1974 and concludes with "The typical aromatic characteristics of roasted coffee can be obtained from roasted coffee cells which have been derived from cultures maintained in active culture at least one year. Cell populations eventually appear to lose their ability to produce coffee precursors. The reason for this coffee culture roasting aroma instability is unknown although one obvious explanation could be cell selection from an initial possible heterogeneous cell population..." I wonder what changes have been made in this iteration of research or if there has even been any improvement.

arthur_sav 5y ago

> Sustainable coffee Is this code word for "it's gonna be trash"?

darthrupert 5y ago
Not necessarily, rather it means at least double the price. Obviously, since veing sustainable and fair is always more expensive.
tomtimtall 5y ago
Honestly curious, where in the world do you live? Equating sustainable with lower quality is really odd to me and I don’t think anywhere at least in Northern Europe. If companies are producing just to get the lowest cost, it ends up being trash. Whenever anyone aims for sustainable products it’s obvious it will come at a higher price and quality becomes essential. That’s at least wha we see in all the sustainable products here
- arthur_sav 5y ago
  Sweden. We have replaced all our produce with lab grown GMOs with no taste what so ever.
  - corroclaro 5y ago
    Ridiculous. The aspect of being genetically modified or not has by itself no influence on parameters of taste. At the local supermarket, you will be hard pressed to find "lab grown GMOs" in any produce section - most of it is grown in southern Sweden using traditional high yield crops (that may taste like nothing for reasons of production). The Swedish Food Agency[1] states that there are very few genetically modified products on the market at all. 1. https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/livsmedel-och-innehall/genmodifierad-mat-gmo https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/livsmedel-och-innehall/genmo...
    - arthur_sav 5y ago
      It must be my imagination then. Most of the produce in Sweden is imported. I do love my seasonal berries though, they taste great. Everything else, from tomatoes to letuce/cucumbers and other daily produce taste like nothing. You can try to refute that but it's a fact. I've lived in the Mediterranean so i have something to compare against. It's not normal to leave an apple on the counter and look the same after a month.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

It would be more sustainable if the poor countries that grow coffee would also be the ones that profit from it. As it is the big coffee factories are all in the rich West.

beebeepka 5y ago
Almost as if slavery is still very much a thing. Said poor countries are exactly where the do called west wants them to be. Do the Swiss grow coco? No, they buy it for peanuts, add some milk and sugar, then sell the final product for at least a modest profit. I wish it was easy to support the people doing the actual work but how? Supporting native brands? Sure but how I know who controls the company and if they are any better than the exploiter I am trying to avoid?
- wrycoder 5y ago
  Look into the Specialty Coffee Association and roastmagazine.com/dailycoffeenews/. Also look at roast.com for an example. (I’m not affiliated.)

Protostome 5y ago

I don't think that growing coffee from cells will be scalable. It suffers the same problems that the cultured meat industry suffers. Ultimately, the most cost-effective (energy and scalability-wise) production method is synthesizing the aromatic molecules directly without going through cell cultures.

patall 5y ago
There a very different techniques of cell culture. For cultured meat for example, the texture is very important which makes it expensive as you have to grow large groups of cells. If that is not necessary here, it will be much cheaper. An example: Quorn, grown in bioreactors since 1985. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn
Jensson 5y ago
Animal cells are very hard to keep alive since they are used to having blood and oxygen constantly pumping, that makes them expensive to farm. Plant cells on the other hand are very robust and survives harsh conditions, they are way cheaper to cultivate. So if anything is worth artificial cultivation like this, it is plants like Coffee where the part we eat is a very small part of the whole plant. Then we can skip the rest of the coffee plant and just grow the beans.

hahamrfunnyguy 5y ago

I've recently started making dandelion coffee, which is prepared by chopping up the roots and roasting them. It tastes similar to coffee. It has nutty, roasty and flowery flavors. I'd say it's less complex than a quality roasted coffee, but it has a nice flavor. It doesn't have any unpleasant flavor like really cheap coffees (Maxwell House, Chase and Sanborn, Folgers, etc). I think if you gave most people this and told them it was coffee, they wouldn't argue with you.

sleepysysadmin 5y ago

Has anyone tried to grow their own arabica coffee tree in a growtent at home?