-Caveat Lector- Now this is *real* mind control... ;^) ================================================= http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,92573-146794-1016849-0,00.ht ml Scientists try to cultivate decaf coffee bean Copyright � 1999 Nando Media Copyright � 1999 Associated Press By BEN DiPIETRO HONOLULU (September 13, 1999 9:18 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - The future of decaffeinated coffee is shaping up in petri dishes at the University of Hawaii, where scientists are growing plants that will produce beans without the buzz. But don't expect to drink a genetically engineered double-mocha decaf anytime soon. The first plants won't be available to commercial growers before 2003, with the first caffeine-free cups of java to be sold in 2006, according to John Stiles, assistant professor of plant physiology. "The decaffeinated coffee you have now is treated chemically to remove the caffeine, and that changes the structure of the bean," Stiles said. "In our process the bean just wouldn't have it to begin with. The quality will be higher." The university, in conjunction with Integrated Coffee Technologies, now is field-testing caffeine-free plants. The first commercial crop will produce about 250,000 pounds, enough coffee for several million cups, said Stiles, who also is director of scientific research for Integrated. Coffee is one of Hawaii's top five crops. First introduced to King Kamehameha I in 1813, coffee was grown on 7,000 acres and generated $28.2 million in 1997, according to the state agriculture department. The state's best known coffee is grown on the Kona side of the island of Hawaii. Decaffeinated coffee accounts for up to 25 percent of U.S. coffee sales, which reached $4 billion in 1997, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Hawaii-based company so far has invested $750,000 in the project and expects to spend another $500,000 to grow the first plants, Stiles said. Seed money came from the state of Hawaii, with additional funding from venture capitalists. The state university owns the patent for the bean and the process that created it and is leasing that to Integrated. Monsanto Corp., in turn, is leasing to Integrated some of the procedures used in extracting the caffeine gene. Monsanto will share revenues from the sales of plants and beans and the future licensing of the technology. Each plant will sell for up to $1.50, about three times the current price. Integrated will market the plants to specialty growers more willing to absorb the higher cost and eager to offer better tasting coffee to customers. Growers eventually will save money after the cost of decaffeination - which can reach 25 percent of the cost of the coffee - is factored in, Stiles said. "Farmers will make back that additional cost in one or two years of harvest," he said. The project also has received interest from coffee growers worldwide. "We're talking with some of the major U.S. coffee roasters, but we have nothing definite yet," he said. The National Coffee Growers Association and Hawaii Coffee Growers Association said they knew nothing about the caffeine-free bean. Maxwell House Coffee spokeswoman Mary Jane Kinkade said the company is monitoring the project. A spokeswoman for the Starbucks coffee chain said the company won't decide on the beans until they are grown and tasted. "Whether this is something we would offer would depend on when we could test those beans," Helen Chung said. "It would depend on the quality of the beans." The idea for a caffeine-free bean began brewing in 1991, when Stiles was having a beer with colleagues and was asked if there was a way to use biotechnology to remove caffeine from coffee. "I didn't work with coffee at the time, so I thought about it and said, 'Yeah, this is the sort of thing you should be able to do,'" he said. Five years later, he and his team succeeded in isolating the protein that creates the caffeine gene. Scientists then isolated the gene and removed it through a process called anti-sense, which removes the regular coffee gene, turns it backward and reinserts it, Stiles said. "If you stop the gene's activities so the protein can't be made, the caffeine can't be made," Stiles said. "Some proteins are easy to isolate, some are hard. This one was hard. Which in a way is probably good for us, or else someone would have done this before." Stiles' team is the first to successfully breed a plant without the caffeine gene, following failed attempts by several groups around the world. Michael Grace of Qusac Decaf Inc., a Canada-based decaffeinator, said the company isn't worried by the threat posed by a caffeine-free bean, saying such a bean likely will find a niche as a specialty product. "It may be caffeine-free, but it may also not have other characteristics of coffee," he said. 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