Costa Rica hosts international coffee symposium

Costa Rican Vice President Luis Liberman on Monday inaugurated the 24th International Conference on Coffee Science, held for the first time in Costa Rica at the Ramada Plaza Herradura Hotel, in the province of Heredia.

For a week, the conference brings together more than 300 scientists, scholars and business owners to discuss coffee research from 30 countries.

Liberman said at the opening ceremony that “Costa Rica has one of the highest rates of productivity per hectare of coffee in the world, and this productivity is the result of more than 60 years of research and development.”

This is the first time that the Association for Science and Information on Coffee is organizing this conference in a Central American country and the third time in Latin America.

According to Ronald Peters, executive director of Costa Rica’s National Coffee Institute, the event, along with the National Coffee Plantation Renewal Program, will serve to encourage research in the field. “In Costa Rica, coffee is expensive to produce, so we need to have access to the most advanced technology possible,” he said.

Genetics, sustainability, product quality, pests, diseases, coffee processing and human physiology are among some of the topics being discussed.