Coffee varietals: Jackson varietal

The varieties known as Jackson, Kent, Coorg, and Mysore—all originating from the same region in India—are most likely late descendant of the first coffee seeds out of Yemen brought to India by Baba Budan in 1670. Recent genetic tests have confirmed that Jackson is related to the Bourbon genetic group.

Mr. Jackson was a coffee farmer in Mysore, India in the early 1900s who discovered trees on his farm tolerant to coffee leaf rust (that tolerance has since been lost and the variety is considered susceptible to rust). Seedlings from these trees were sent to research stations in both Kenya and Tanzania in the 1920s. These original trees gave rise to the Jackson variety now commonly found in Rwanda. (It is not well referenced how Jackson got from Kenya to Rwanda; documents indicate it may have come via the germplasm collection at Mulungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo established in the 1930s, or been brought by Kenyan settler farmers in the 1940s.)

Read more at World Coffee Research’s Variety Catalog