Honduras, January 2017: IHCAFE receives reports of rust on Lempira, the Catimor (HdT 832/1 × Caturra) massively replanted after 2012 and now a significant share of the national orchard. Tests confirm susceptibility. In April 2017, national incidence is only 6%, below the economic damage threshold, but 18% of the Lempira farms surveyed in March exceed 10%. Two hypotheses: a local race has mutated, or a foreign race has entered.

In April 2018, IHCAFE identifies four new strains. The 2025 WCR catalog now classes Costa Rica 95 and IHCAFE 90, two Catimors of the same 832/1 × Caturra origin, as having “low/susceptible” resistance, Lempira as “intermediate”, while Parainema (a selection of T5296) remains “highly resistant”. In Nicaragua, the resistance of most commercial cultivars gave way during the five years before 2022.

World Coffee Research, “Coffee leaf rust resistant coffee variety overcome in Honduras” (May 2017); Daily Coffee News, 05/12/2017; USDA FAS, Coffee Annual Honduras (May 2018); WCR 2025, Lempira, Costa Rica 95, IHCAFE 90, Parainema sheets; BSPP 2022, p. 14 WCR, Arabica Coffee Varieties (2025); STiR 2021 for Castillo; a ranking holds for the races present at the date of the test

Colombia, May 2021: Cenicafé announces six rust races never before characterized in the country and nine variants with increased genetic complexity, with virulences and aggressiveness different from those of other producing countries. About 84% of the Colombian area is then planted to resistant varieties (Castillo, Cenicafé 1, regional Castillo, Tabi) and 16% to susceptible ones (Caturra, Typica, Bourbon, some Catimors).

Average incidence is 20% or more on susceptible varieties, 6% or less on resistant ones; potential losses without management range from 30 to 80% on susceptible ones. In parallel, Cenicafé is working on introgressing the SH3 gene, of liberica origin, into Castillo lineages to broaden the resistance base. Cenicafé has released fourteen resistant varieties in total.

STiR Coffee and Tea, “FNC Warns of More Aggressive Races and New Leaf Rust Variants”, 05/12/2021; Journal of Plant Breeding and Crop Science, “Introgression of the SH3 gene resistant to rust in improved lines of Castillo variety”

Peru, August 2024: eighteen rust samples taken from Caturra, Typica and Catimor in several regions, sent to the CIFC and read on 27 differentials, reveal five known races and two new races. The Catimor lineages are susceptible to the two new races and to races XXXIV and XXXV. Catimor was the answer of the Peruvian emergency plan to the 2012-2013 epidemic: ten years later, what knows how to open it is found in the field, at about the moment when the replanted trees reach full yield.

Eighteen samples measure neither a frequency nor an area; they establish that the thing exists. Genetic resistance is not a property, it is a delay, and the delay is shrinking: forty years for the first generation of Timor, about ten for Lempira.

Quispe-Apaza et al., “New Races of Hemileia vastatrix Detected in Peruvian Coffee Fields”, Agronomy 14 (2024), 1811; LC ch. 16