双语新闻：研究人员研究咖啡的起源

The coffee you had this morning could have its beginnings some 600,000 years ago.

你今天早上喝的咖啡可能起源于大约60万年前。

Using genes from coffee plants from around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world's most popular kind of coffee. Scientists call it Coffea arabica. Coffee lovers know it simply as "arabica."

研究人员利用来自世界各地咖啡植物的基因，为世界上最受欢迎的一种咖啡建立了一个家谱。科学家称其为阿拉比卡咖啡。咖啡爱好者将其简称为“阿拉比卡咖啡”。

The researchers recently published a new study about coffee. They found that the species appeared around 600,000 years ago. The plant was likely the result of natural breeding of two other coffee species.

研究人员最近发表了一项关于咖啡的新研究。他们发现这个物种出现在大约60万年前。这种植物很可能是另外两种咖啡品种自然繁殖的结果。

Victor Albert of the University at Buffalo was a co-leader of the study. He said the plant likely developed without the help of humans.

布法罗大学的维克多·阿尔伯特是这项研究的共同负责人。他说，这种植物很可能是在没有人类帮助的情况下发展起来的。

Wild coffee plants likely started in Ethiopia. But they are thought to have been first roasted and brewed in Yemen starting in the 1400s. In the 1600s, Indian monk Baba Budan is said to have taken seven raw coffee beans back to his homeland from Yemen, laying the beginnings for coffee's worldwide takeover.

野生咖啡树可能起源于埃塞俄比亚。但人们认为，从15世纪开始，它们首先在也门被烘烤和酿造。据说在17世纪，印度僧侣巴巴·布丹从也门带回了七颗生咖啡豆，为咖啡在全球的普及奠定了基础。

Arabica coffee, loved for its smooth and sweet flavor, now makes up 60 to 70 percent of the global coffee market. The rest of the market is made up of robusta, a stronger and more bitter-tasting coffee made from one of arabica's parents, Coffea canephora.

阿拉比卡咖啡因其柔滑和香甜的味道而备受喜爱，目前占全球咖啡市场的60%至70%。市场上其余的咖啡都是罗布斯塔咖啡，这是一种味道更浓、味道更苦的咖啡，由阿拉比卡咖啡的祖先之一canephora咖啡制成。

To learn about arabica coffee's past, researchers studied the genetic information, or genomes, of C. canephora and another parent plant called Coffea eugenioides. They also studied more than 30 different arabica plants.

为了了解阿拉比卡咖啡的过去，研究人员研究了C. canephora和另一种名为eugenioides的亲本植物的遗传信息或基因组。他们还研究了30多种不同的阿拉比卡咖啡植物。

One of the plants was a sample from the 1700s provided by the Natural History Museum in London. The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus used that plant to give coffee its scientific name.

其中一种植物是伦敦自然历史博物馆提供的18世纪的样本。瑞典博物学家卡尔·林奈用这种植物给咖啡取了学名。

The study appeared recently in the publication Nature Genetics. Researchers from Nestlé, a big Swiss food company which owns several coffee brands, helped with the study.

这项研究最近发表在《自然遗传学》杂志上。雀巢雀巢是一家拥有多个咖啡品牌的瑞士大型食品公司，该公司的研究人员参与了这项研究。

The arabica plant's population changed over thousands of years before humans began growing it. The arabica plants did well during warm, wet periods and suffered through dry ones. These difficult times created what scientists call "population bottlenecks," when only a small number of genetically similar plants survived.

在人类开始种植阿拉比卡咖啡之前，它的数量已经发生了数千年的变化。阿拉比卡咖啡在温暖潮湿的季节生长得很好，但在干燥的季节却很糟糕。这些困难时期造成了科学家所谓的“种群瓶颈”，只有少数基因相似的植物存活了下来。

Today, these genetic similarities mean arabica coffee plants are more likely to be hurt by diseases like coffee leaf rust, which causes costly losses every year. The researchers explored the makeup of one arabica variety that is resistant to coffee leaf rust. They are interested in parts of its genetic code that could help protect the plant.

如今，这些基因相似性意味着阿拉比卡咖啡树更容易受到像咖啡叶锈病这样的疾病的伤害，这种疾病每年都会造成昂贵的损失。研究人员探索了一种抗咖啡叶锈病的阿拉比卡咖啡品种的组成。他们对能够帮助保护这种植物的部分遗传密码很感兴趣。

The study clarifies how arabica came to be and gives clues that could help protect the crop, said Fabian Echeverria of Texas A&M University. Echeverria was not involved with the research.

德克萨斯农工大学的Fabian Echeverria说，这项研究阐明了阿拉比卡咖啡的起源，并提供了有助于保护这种作物的线索。埃切维里亚没有参与这项研究。

Exploring arabica's past and present could help give information about how to keep coffee plants healthy – ensuring morning cups of coffee into the future.

探索阿拉比卡咖啡的过去和现在可以帮助我们了解如何保持咖啡植物的健康——确保未来每天早上都能喝上一杯咖啡。