Centro de Investigação das Ferrugens do Cafeeiro/ISA/ULisboa

al), had as main objective to centralize the research on coffee rusts in one place with no danger of introducing these diseases or new races of the pathogens in the coffee producing regions of the world. Its chief aims was to assist coffee research centers in the Portuguese Overseas Territories and in coffee growing countries throughout the world, in the selection of rust resistant coffee plants, and training of scientists on the study of these diseases. Since 1955, CIFC has played a central role in the development of an International Research Network of more than 40 coffee growing countries on coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix) and after 1989 also on coffee berry disease (Colletotrichum kahawae). The main beneficiaries of the activities carried out at CIFC are the coffee growers, in particular the millions of smallholder farmers, as cultivars with resistance to CLR and/or CBD will make them less dependent on the vagaries of the international coffee market and thus enable them to produce coffee in an economically and ecologically sustainable manner.