Réunion

History

When the first coffee trees from Arabia arrive on Bourbon Island, the former name of Réunion, the island already has a coffee tree of its own. The historian Gwyn Campbell dates to 1711 the discovery, near Saint-Paul and above 600 meters, of a wild coffee tree that the inhabitants call café marron, marron then designating what had reverted to the wild state. It is Coffea mauritiana, an indigenous species, which geneticists call endemic, that is, peculiar to these islands, and which Cheney also reports in Mauritius. Isidore Guët, who publishes in 1888 a book drawn from the Navy archives, tells the matter differently: it is the plants from Arabia, landed in 1715, whose resemblance to a shrub of the island makes people recognize, “to the common joy,” that Bourbon possesses the coffee tree in the wild state. This café marron is shipped to France, well received in 1721 according to Campbell, but judged less sweet, less fragrant and more bitter than Mocha coffee; Cheney, in 1925, finds only 0.07% caffeine in it and calls its brew bitter. No surprise given the recent phylogeny of the genus, which finds high and constant caffeine only in the coffee trees of West and Central Africa [5][15][3][6][16].

The true coffee tree, the one then called “the only good one,” comes from Yemen. According to Guët, the ship the Auguste, of the shipowners’ company of Saint-Malo, carrying a letter from Louis XIV, anchors at Mocha, the coffee port of Yemen, on May 25, 1715, stays there at least until July 29 and lands at Saint-Paul toward the end of September six half-barrels each carrying a coffee tree. Guët insists on a point that later accounts erase: the Compagnie des Indes had no part in this introduction, which it had nonetheless planned. Ukers, in 1922, attributes on the contrary the operation to the Company and places it in 1715-1717, with a captain he names Dufougeret-Grenier. The World Coffee Research variety catalog counts three attempts, in 1708, in 1715 and in 1718, and specifies that only a few plants of the second and some of the third took [3][4][7].

Of the six plants of 1715, only one survives. Guët first calls it a tradition, then finds its trace in a Saint-Paul census of November 1719: the tree, entrusted to a resident of Saint-Denis, gives its first ripe seeds in January 1718; of 3,376 seeds put in the ground, 2,480 are lost and 896 sprout. It is from this bottleneck, a single tree and a few hundred descendants, that most of the Bourbon lineage comes. Genetics confirmed it in 2024: the arabica genome study published in Nature Genetics makes the present Bourbon group descend from a single surviving plant around 1720 and finds in it a lower diversity than in the Typica lineage, because of this passage through a single individual. Cultivation quickly becomes compulsory for the colonists, and a letter of September 1723 counts 1,406 bearing coffee trees that year and promises 87,208 for 1725, a progression that the Company itself judges exaggerated [3][8].

In these orchards later appears a different coffee tree, dwarf, fir-shaped, with narrow leaves and elongated beans: the Bourbon pointu (pointed Bourbon), so named in contrast to the Bourbon rond (round Bourbon), the ordinary coffee tree. Botanists call it Laurina: the breeder Cramer already uses this name in Java before 1922, according to Ukers, and the botanist Auguste Chevalier retains it in 1947. Its date and place of birth are not established: the review by Aurélie Lécolier and her colleagues, in 2009, says it was generally selected in the early 19th century; a 2010 CIRAD paper speaks of a discovery in 1771 in a plantation near Sainte-Marie; the 2026 DAAF sheet says only “a few decades” after the introduction. What is established is its nature: a spontaneous mutation of Bourbon, carried by two copies of the same recessive gene, and not a cross with café marron, as the Java breeders cited by Ukers believed at the beginning of the 20th century [9][4][14][2][11][22].

Coffee makes the island’s fortune in the 18th century, then retreats before sugar cane. Ukers writes that a century before him, around 1820, production was estimated at up to 10 million pounds, about 4,500 tonnes, and that this pace held for a good part of the 19th century; he still counts 530,000 pounds exported in 1909, about 240 tonnes, then a recent average of 25,000 pounds, a dozen tonnes, and only 3,527 pounds in 1918, or 1.6 tonnes. The DAAF retains another chronology: 2,000 hectares of coffee trees in 1865, nearly 6,000 in 1880, then a decline at the end of the century under the effect of cane and diseases, until the sector disappeared around 1950. Ukers also notes the reputation of the island’s coffee, a small hard bean, “round and pointed,” close to Mocha in the cup and almost entirely sold in France [5][4][2].

Before disappearing from the island, Bourbon left it. World Coffee Research writes that it does not leave Réunion before the middle of the 19th century. The Spiritan missionaries, settled on the island in 1841, take it to Zanzibar in 1859, then to Bagamoyo, on the coast of present-day Tanzania, in 1862, and as far as the Taita Hills of Kenya in 1893; it reaches southern Brazil, near Campinas, in 1860, and from there Central America. Ukers has the first arabica seeds planted in Tonkin in 1887 and the coffee of British East Africa come from Réunion, and describes in Indochina a “Bourbon rond” and a “Bourbon Le Roy” with a smaller bean. A good part of the Bourbon grown in the world, and of the varieties derived from it such as Caturra, therefore trace back to the few Réunion plants of the early 18th century [7][4][8][22].

Today

Réunion coffee is today a garden and small-plot coffee. After the abandonment of the large plantations, the Bourbon pointu survived in the Creole gardens, where the surveys of the program launched in 2002 count nearly 2,000 coffee trees; four mother plants are retained from them to produce the plants distributed to producers. The trials place the best terroirs in the west and south of the island, between 700 and 1,000 meters, and the cooperative imposes its plants in defined zones, since only 2 of the 49 soil types recorded on the island are suitable, according to the DAAF. The protected designation of origin project delimits a zone from Saint-Joseph to Saint-Paul, between 600 and 1,200 meters. The café marron, for its part, lives in the forest: a 2019 genetic study sampled it at 34 sites, and places it between 270 and 1,500 meters of altitude. It is also conserved, with other wild coffee trees, in a collection planted on the island between 2008 and 2012 and run by the IRD and CIRAD: about 750 accessions of 35 species, including some 200 genotypes of species peculiar to Réunion, Mauritius and Mayotte, and a hundred coffee trees cultivated on the island in the 18th and 19th centuries [2][15][17].

The sector grows only one variety, and this is deliberate: the cooperative itself supplies the plants, drawn from the four reference trees, to keep a selected genetic material. Its mutation changes the whole plant. Lécolier and her colleagues measured that in one month ordinary Bourbon grows six times more in height than Bourbon pointu, the mutation acting very early on the periphery of the apex, the tip of the stem where leaves and internodes are born. It also divides the caffeine by two: Baumann and his colleagues find in 1998 from 0.68 to 0.71% caffeine in the bean of the Laurina lineage, relative to dry matter, and attribute the drop to two copies of the lr gene that slow the synthesis; Sébastien Piccino’s thesis measures 0.75% in the island’s green coffee. Ordinary coffee contains about double [2][10][11][12].

The process is a wet process. According to the DAAF, the cherries are picked at full ripeness, from June to December, the trees being visited every day; they are pulped, that is, stripped of their skin and pulp, the bean ferments, then dries in the sun before being stored and sold green, or roasted. The sheet cites among the requirements fermentation and maceration, without giving the duration or the conduct, controlled drying and careful milling, milling being the hulling that removes the parchment, that paper-like envelope around the bean. The cooperative has had its own processing unit at Le Tampon since the end of 2016, after eight years in the premises of CIRAD, which transferred to it the equipment from the trial phase [2].

Quality is measured and graded. To be sold as specialty coffee, the lot must obtain more than 80 out of 100 on the Specialty Coffee Association scoresheet, before a panel of eight tasters. The sector sells in three categories, Grand cru, Sublime and Authentique, which Piccino’s team managed to tell apart chemically: aldehydes with a strong odor value, that is, present well above their perception threshold, dominate the Grand cru, phenylacetaldehyde the Sublime, and a group of pyrazines the Authentique. In the cup, the thesis notes nine high-impact molecules, three of them with citrus notes; a CIRAD paper speaks of a fruity citrus taste. The roast profile chosen after sensory analysis is short [2][13][12][14].

The sector is tiny. The agricultural census counts 60 coffee producers in 2010 and 59 in 2020, of whom fewer than ten are independent; the Bourbon Pointu cooperative, founded in 2008 and the island’s only coffee cooperative, brings together 53 of them today on about fifteen hectares. Coffee is almost never a specialization: 5 farms do only coffee, about thirty combine it with fruit, vegetables or perfume plants, about twenty with livestock, and 41% of coffee growers have another job. The cooperative produces about one tonne of green coffee a year, 500 to 600 kilos in cyclone years; the IEDOM noted 1.2 tonnes sold in 2016. The pests that damage the fruit most are the coffee berry borer, a small beetle that bores into the cherry, and an insect that the sheet calls smaragdina [2][18].

Almost everything stays on the island. The cooperative sells about 80% of its green coffee there, around 700 kilos, and all of its roasted coffee, mainly to visitors, at markets, in grocery stores and museums. It exports on average 300 kilos of green a year, mainly to Japan, the United States and Switzerland, and says it cannot meet demand; the interest of Japanese buyers in fact triggered the revival of 2002. People in Réunion, for their part, drink imported coffee: 3,170 tonnes in 2025, of which two thirds already roasted, coming nearly 90% from metropolitan France, and one third green, coming mainly from Madagascar, Ethiopia and Cameroon. The island’s coffee therefore weighs, by calculation, about three ten-thousandths of what it imports. A protected designation of origin is in preparation, which the 2026 sheet expects within the year; in 2022, a written question to the National Assembly noted that this coffee still had no protection [2][19].

Key facts

Species and variety grown

Coffea arabica, Bourbon pointu (Laurina), from four mother plants [2]

Indigenous species

Coffea mauritiana, café marron, endemic to Réunion and Mauritius [15]

Arrival of the Mocha coffee trees

end of September 1715 at Saint-Paul, six plants, one survivor [3]

First ripe seeds

January 1718; 896 plants sprouted out of 3,376 seeds [3]

Caffeine of the Bourbon pointu

0.68 to 0.71% of dry matter, about half that of an ordinary arabica [11]

Altitude of the terroirs

700 to 1,000 m in the west and south; 600 to 1,200 m for the designation project [2]

Harvest

June to December, daily pass through the trees [2]

Recent production

about 1 t of green coffee a year, 500 to 600 kg in cyclone years [2]

Producers

59 in the 2020 agricultural census, of which 53 in the cooperative [2]

Exports

about 300 kg of green coffee a year, mainly to Japan [2]

Coffee imports in 2025

3,170 t, of which two thirds already roasted [2]

In FAOSTAT

no green coffee value since 1961, territory present for 114 other products until 2006 [1]

Gray areas

Réunion appears in no FAOSTAT coffee series, and this silence is not an absence of coffee. The territory exists in the database, under its own name, with 114 agricultural products, from vanilla to bananas, but none has a value after 2006, and green coffee does not appear there in any year since 1961. Guadeloupe and Martinique have a coffee series there, closed in 2006 as well. France has a coffee row in no year: if the figures of the overseas departments have been counted there since, which the database does not say, Réunion coffee does not appear there either. The only published production figure is that of the DAAF, which says sometimes that the production of the sector, sometimes that of the cooperative, amounts to about one tonne: it is not known what the independents produce. The same sheet gives 80% of the green coffee sold on the island, then 700 kilos out of a tonne, or 70% [1][2].

The areas do not cross-check. The DAAF writes that the cooperative farms about fifteen hectares with 53 producers, and that the average orchard size went from 5,000 square meters in 2010 to nearly a hectare in 2020 for 59 producers, which would make about fifty hectares, three times more. The second figure perhaps covers the whole orchard of the farm and not just the coffee trees; the sheet does not say. One tonne of green coffee on fifteen hectares would make barely 70 kilos per hectare, a very low yield that young or sparse coffee trees might perhaps explain, but that no source comments on. The sheet finally cites smaragdina among the pests without giving the species [2].

The quantified history is fragile. Ukers places the production peak around 1820 and says it was sustained for a good part of the 19th century; Campbell writes that production, important in the 18th century, then declined rapidly; the DAAF, on the contrary, has the coffee trees grow from 2,000 to 6,000 hectares between 1865 and 1880. These three accounts do not measure the same thing, tonnes, hectares or overall impression, and no export series of the island was read here. The date of disappearance also varies: around 1950 for the DAAF, a last shipment of 200 kilos in 1942 for Wikipedia, which cites no document. The introduction itself has two versions, the Compagnie des Indes for Ukers and the DAAF, the merchants of Saint-Malo for Guët, who cites the letters of the time [4][5][2][3][20].

The origin of the Bourbon pointu is the most tangled question. The dates proposed range from 1771 to the early 19th century, with no contemporary document read here. Some accounts confuse the Bourbon pointu, a mutant of arabica, with the indigenous café marron: Wikipedia has it described as early as 1711 by a secretary of the Company, and a school textbook of the Académie de La Réunion calls “Bourbon pointu” the local variety as opposed to the Bourbon rond that came from Mocha. The name café Leroy, given to this coffee tree after a planter who died in 1770, rests only on Wikipedia; Ukers speaks of a Bourbon Le Roy in Indochina without saying where the name comes from. The idea of a hybrid with café marron long circulated: Cheney reports that a cross of the two species circulated in Java under the name Coffea mauritiana in 1876, and the Laurina profile in this site’s variety atlas notes that the Campinas Agronomic Institute was still recording Laurina as a hybrid in 1999. It runs up against biology: arabica has twice as many chromosomes as café marron and does not flower at the same time, which prevents, according to the 2019 genetic study, any gene exchange between the two on the island. The review by Lécolier, which cross-checks archives and genetics, could be read only in abstract [9][20][21][4][6][15][8][11].

Not covered: The full text of the Lécolier review (2009), the only work that cross-checks archives and genetics on the origin of the Bourbon pointu: closed at the publisher, HAL copy behind an anti-bot check, IRD server under maintenance at the time of the search. A series of the island’s coffee exports in the 18th and 19th centuries: Thomas’s Essai de statistique (1828) could not be downloaded (CNAM server error), and Campbell’s chapter was read only on its first page. The production figure of the independent producers, the actual area in coffee trees and the yields: no source gives them. The state of the protected designation of origin application in October 2026: not verified with the INAO (French National Institute of Origin and Quality). The CIRAD statistical report of 2007 on the Bourbon pointu project, downloadable on Agritrop but marked “restricted distribution,” was not used. The caffeine content of café marron measured with a modern method: only Cheney’s value (1925) was found.

1. FAOSTAT, Production: Crops and livestock products, normalized archive (item Coffee, green, code 656), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2025, https://bulks-faostat.fao.org/production/Production_Crops_Livestock_E_ solid level
   Read in the copy extracted on disk (file of October 20, 2026). The Réunion area (code 182, M49 638) exists and carries 114 products, including vanilla (31 t in 2003, 22 t in 2006, flag A); no production value after 2006 for any product; no row for green coffee (656), in any year. Guadeloupe and Martinique have a green coffee series from 1961 to 2006; France has none.
2. Filière café, Agreste La Réunion, Essentiel, fiche filière n° 3, DAAF de La Réunion, Service de l'information statistique et économique (written by Elisa Le Berre), 2026, https://daaf.reunion.agriculture.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/202606_filiere_cafe.p solid level
   June 2026 sheet, four pages, read in full. Introduction in the early 18th century, mutation “a few decades later”; 2,000 ha in 1865, nearly 6,000 ha in 1880, disappearance around 1950; revival in 2002 (Japanese buyers), 2002-2007 program with the Region, the State and CIRAD, nearly 2,000 coffee trees recorded, four mother plants; terroirs of the west and south between 700 and 1,000 m; 59 producers in 2020 (60 in 2010), cooperative founded in 2008, 53 producers, about fifteen hectares, 2 soils out of 49 suitable; harvest from June to December, fermentation, sun drying; Le Tampon unit since late 2016; SCA score above 80, panel of 8; about 1 t of green a year, 500 to 600 kg in a cyclone year; 80% sold on the island (about 700 kg), 300 kg exported; imports of 3,170 t in 2025; PDO project from Saint-Joseph to Saint-Paul, 600 to 1,200 m, expected in 2026; borer and smaragdina. The sheet bears “N°3” and not “n° 32” as the previous documentary landmark wrote.
3. Les origines de l'île Bourbon et de la colonisation française à Madagascar, d'après des documents inédits tirés des archives coloniales du ministère de la Marine et des Colonies, Isidore Guët, Paris, C. Bayle, 1888, https://archive.org/details/originesdelilebou00guet solid level
   Full text read (p. 255-275 and following). King’s letter handed over on October 31, 1714 to M. de la Boissière, commanding the Auguste; arrival at Mocha on May 25, 1715, still there on July 29, at Bourbon at the end of September; six half-barrels landed at Saint-Paul; recognition of the island’s wild coffee tree; council of November 11, 1715; the Compagnie des Indes “had nothing to do with” sending the plants; a single surviving plant, first ripe seeds in January 1718 (Saint-Paul census of November 24, 1719); 3,376 seeds sown, 2,480 lost, 896 sprouted; census of September 1723: 1,406 trees in production, 17,518 and 87,208 announced, progression judged exaggerated by the Company.
4. All About Coffee, chapters on the propagation of the coffee tree, the producing countries and the commercial sorts, export table, William H. Ukers, 1922, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28500 solid level
   Read in the library text copy. Introduction in 1715-1717 by the Compagnie des Indes with Captain Dufougeret-Grenier, of Saint-Malo, exports nine years later; “a century ago” production estimated at up to 10,000,000 pounds, maintained for a good part of the 19th century; 530,000 pounds exported in 1909, recent average of about 25,000 pounds; table: 3,527 pounds in 1918, average of 26,455 pounds; small hard bean, “round and pointed bean,” close to Mocha; seeds from Réunion to Tonkin in 1887 and to British East Africa; Grand Bourbon, Bourbon rond and Bourbon Le Roy in Indochina; Laurina described by Cramer as a hybrid of arabica and mauritiana. Conversions calculated at 0.45359237 kg per pound.
5. The Origins and Development of Coffee Production in Réunion and Madagascar, 1711-1972, in The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, 1500-1989, p. 67-99, Gwyn Campbell, Cambridge University Press (ed. W. G. Clarence-Smith and S. Topik), 2003, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511512193.014 solid level
   Only the first page, which is public, was read. Production important in the 18th century then rapid decline; wild coffee Mauritiana discovered in 1711 near Saint-Paul above 600 m, called café marron; bought by English and Dutch ships from 1720, well received in France in 1721, but judged less sweet, less fragrant and more bitter than Mocha.
6. Coffee: a monograph of the economic species of the genus Coffea L., entry Coffea mauritiana, Ralph Holt Cheney, New York University Press, 1925, https://archive.org/details/coffeemonographo00chen medium level
   P. 66: names café marron and coffee tree of Bourbon; discovery at Bourbon in 1715; bitter brew; caffeine of 0.07%; cross with arabica by Frappier and Le Héry, appeared in Java in 1876 under the name C. mauritiana. Old measurement, method not described.
7. Coffee Varieties Catalog, section “The Bourbon lineage”, World Coffee Research, 2025, https://varieties.worldcoffeeresearch.org/ solid level
   Read in the library copy (revision of September 4, 2025). Three attempts at introduction from Yemen, 1708, 1715 and 1718, confirmed by genetics; a few plants of the second and some of the third succeed; Bourbon does not leave the island before the middle of the 19th century; Spiritan mission in Réunion in 1841, Zanzibar 1859, Bagamoyo 1862, Bura 1893; arrival in Brazil near Campinas in 1860.
8. The genome and population genomics of allopolyploid Coffea arabica reveal the diversification history of modern coffee cultivars, Nature Genetics 56, p. 721-731, J. Salojärvi et al., 2024, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-024-01695-w solid level
   Read in the library copy. The descendants of a single surviving plant around 1720 form the present Bourbon group; Bourbon has a lower diversity than Typica, because of this bottleneck of a single individual; the “Bourbon pointu” sample groups with the Bourbon-Typica cultivars.
9. Unraveling the origin of Coffea arabica 'Bourbon pointu' from La Réunion: a historical and scientific perspective, Euphytica 168, p. 1-10, A. Lécolier, P. Besse, A. Charrier, T.-N. Tchakaloff, M. Noirot, 2009, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-009-9886-7 solid level
   Abstract only (full text closed, HAL copy behind an anti-bot check, IRD server under maintenance on October 22, 2026). The name Laurina attributed to Chevalier (Encyclopédie biologique, vol. 28, 1947); generally held to have been selected at Bourbon in the early 19th century; dwarf fir-shaped trees, excellent cup quality; origin “ambiguous” and tangled in books and local bulletins; the review cross-checks archives and scientific studies.
10. Effects of the Laurina mutation on the shoot apex in C. arabica cv. Laurina, 21st international scientific colloquium on coffee (ASIC), Montpellier, p. 902-906, A. Lécolier, J.-L. Verdeil, H. Chrestin, M. Noirot, 2007, https://agritrop.cirad.fr/540093/ solid level
    Abstract read on Agritrop. Laurina, called Bourbon pointu, appeared in Réunion by spontaneous mutation of Bourbon; dwarf and pyramidal habit; in one month, Bourbon grows six times more in height; the mutation acts early on the periphery of the apex, not on the meristem itself.
11. Non-destructive analysis of natural variability in bean caffeine content of Laurina coffee, Phytochemistry 49 (6), p. 1569-1573, T. W. Baumann, M. R. Sondahl, S. S. Mösli Waldhauser, J. A. Kretschmar, 1998, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0031-9422(98)00215-5 solid level
    Abstract read via PubMed. Caffeine of Laurina beans from 0.36 to 1.08%; average of 0.68 to 0.71% of dry matter for the parent line, 0.56 to 0.61% for the somaclones; the lr lr alleles halve the “normal” content by slowing synthesis, not degradation.
12. Rôle des constituants chimiques du café vert, du terroir et des traitements post-récolte sur la qualité aromatique du Bourbon Pointu, doctoral thesis in chemistry, 190 p., Sébastien Piccino, Université de La Réunion, 2011, https://sciences.univ-reunion.fr/archives/monsieur-sebastien-piccino-s solid level
    Summary of the defense announcement read; year and pagination read on Agritrop. Green coffee: sucrose 7.1%, trigonelline 1.3%, caffeine 0.75%, 5-caffeoylquinic acid 4.7% of dry matter; short roast profile; 145 volatile compounds, nine with strong olfactory impact, including dodecanal and 2-ethylhexan-1-ol with citrus notes.
13. Aromatic composition and potent odorants of the “specialty coffee” brew “Bourbon Pointu” correlated to its three trade classifications, Food Research International 61, p. 264-271, S. Piccino, R. Boulanger, F. Descroix, A. Shum Cheong Sing, 2014, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodres.2013.07.034 solid level
    Abstract read on the CIRAD publications site. Three commercial categories, Grand cru, Sublime and Authentique; aldehydes with strong odor value for the Grand cru, phenylacetaldehyde for the Sublime, pyrazines for the Authentique.
14. Coffee Bourbon Pointu of Reunion Island: How to define a terroir to obtain a “Gourmet” coffee, 23rd ASIC colloquium, Bali, p. 1040-1045, P. Aguilar, L. Berthiot, F. Descroix (CIRAD), 2011, https://agritrop.cirad.fr/560173/ medium level
    Abstract read on Agritrop (paper of 2010, proceedings of 2011). “Café Bourbon pointu de la Réunion” project for a niche coffee; first coffee trees from Yemen in the 18th century; mutation discovered in 1771 in a plantation near Sainte-Marie, no source cited in the abstract; low-caffeine coffee, fruity citrus taste.
15. Genetic diversity and population divergences of an indigenous tree (Coffea mauritiana) in Reunion Island: role of climatic and geographical factors, Heredity 122, p. 833-847, E. Garot et al., 2019, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41437-018-0168-9 solid level
    Text read on PubMed Central. Indigenous species widespread in the Réunion forest; 323 individuals at 34 sites; small patches between 270 and 1,500 m; mean temperature of 13 to 24 °C, rainfall of 1,100 to 5,000 mm.
16. Genotyping-by-sequencing provides the first well-resolved phylogeny for coffee (Coffea) and insights into the evolution of caffeine content in its species, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 109, p. 351-361, P. Hamon et al., 2017, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2017.02.009 solid level
    Abstract read via PubMed. A high and constant caffeine content is found only in the species of West and Central Africa; independent radiations in the islands of the western Indian Ocean, including Mauritius. Used to place the low caffeine of café marron, not to quantify it.
17. Safeguarding the diversity of species of the genus Coffea in Reunion Island, poster of the ASIC 2021 colloquium, T. Joët, J.-P. Labouisse, S. Dussert, E. Couturon, I. Fock-Bastide, M. Seguin, P. Lashermes (IRD, CIRAD, Université de La Réunion), 2021, https://alphavisa.com/asic/2021/documents/eposters-presentation/S1-PO- solid level
    Collection of wild coffee trees planted in Réunion between 2008 and 2012: about 750 accessions of 35 species, including about 200 genotypes of species endemic to Réunion, Mauritius and Mayotte, and about 100 genotypes of species cultivated on the island in the 18th and 19th centuries; managed by CIRAD and IRD since 2019.
18. Rapport annuel économique de La Réunion 2020, chapitre agriculture, Institut d'émission des départements d'outre-mer (IEDOM), 2021, https://www.iedom.fr/IMG/rapport_annuel_iedom_la_reunion_2020/index-85 solid level
    The Bourbon pointu producers “are struggling to keep the sector going”; the cooperative marketed 1.2 tonnes of this coffee in 2016.
19. Question écrite n° 43916, Protection des spécialités ultramarines, AOP/IGP à La Réunion, Assemblée nationale, 15th legislature (question by Karine Lebon), 2022, https://questions.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/15/questions/QANR5L15QE43 solid level
    Published in the Journal officiel on February 1, 2022, withdrawn on June 21, 2022 without an answer (end of term). The Bourbon pointu has “at present no national protection or recognition.”
20. Bourbon pointu, Wikipédia en français, 2026, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_pointu low level
    Used only as a witness of the stories in circulation: description as early as 1711 by Boyvin d’Hardancourt, name café Leroy after a planter who died in 1770, last shipment of 200 kg in 1942, Japanese visit of 1999. These points are not confirmed by a primary source read here; the page itself flags an insufficiently sourced caffeine content.
21. Bourbon au temps du café, fiche pédagogique « Notre île aux temps modernes », Académie de La Réunion, school site (bloc-note.ac-reunion.fr), 2020, https://bloc-note.ac-reunion.fr/9740416j/files/2020/05/Bourbon-au-temp low level
    Example of the confusion noted by Lécolier: six Mocha plants in 1715 called Bourbon rond “to differentiate it from the local variety, named Bourbon pointu.” Also cites aphids after 1745.
22. Vernacular Names and Genetics of Cultivated Coffee (Coffea arabica) in Yemen, Agronomy 12, 1970, C. Montagnon, V. Rossi, C. Guercio, F. Sheibani, 2022, https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12081970 solid level
    Read in the library copy. The Laurina mutation, or Bourbon pointu, is a low-caffeine mutation of Bourbon, well described (referring to Lécolier 2009); no molecular marker yet makes it possible to detect mutations in Coffea.