$1 Billion Problem: New Technology Could Save Your Daily Cup of Coffee

A new study offers a breakthrough in detecting coffee berry borer infestations, a pest that cost the global coffee industry over $1 billion in 2023.

New research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) may help protect one of the world’s most beloved beverages: your daily cup of coffee. Scientists have developed a faster and smarter way to detect infections in coffee berries, offering a promising solution to a global agricultural problem.

In 2023 alone, the coffee industry lost over $1 billion due to a tiny but devastating pest called the coffee berry borer. This insect burrows into coffee berries, ruining crops and threatening coffee supplies around the world.

To tackle the problem, ECU researchers turned to innovative image-processing technology called L-systems. This software mimics the way human vision works, using color and shape detection to quickly spot signs of infection.

Instead of searching for the elusive pest itself, drones equipped with this system scan coffee crops from above and focus on what the borer leaves behind. According to ECU lecturer Dr. David Cook, that leftover debris is much easier to detect than the insect itself.

Finding the Debris, Not the Bug

“Coffee berry borers are very difficult to identify. They’re tiny little insects that are very difficult to see with the naked eye,” Dr Cook said. “However, instead of looking for the coffee berry borer itself, we looked for what it did.

“If you imagine when you drill into a piece of wood, you see little bits of sawdust gather around the outside of the hole. In the same way, when a borer bores into a coffee berry, they leave an enormous amount of debris, called frass and this is much easier to identify.”

With the speed of identifying a coffee berry borer critical, this research could help farmers to act swiftly and save harvests.

“The problem with the coffee berry borer is if it’s not recognized, it spreads through the various berries from bunch to bunch, then bush to bush, and it can destroy an entire crop,” Dr Cook said. “This allows farmers to make very quick decisions about which parts of a crop might be infested with this particular pathogen and begin treating immediately.”

Economic and Market Impact

ECU Senior Lecturer and co-author Dr Leisa Armstrong said it could have a huge economic benefit for farmers in coffee-producing countries.

“This coffee berry bora affects coffee in South America as well as in Indonesia and parts of Africa. So, for the three major producing areas for coffee, it’s a big thing,” she said. “Coffee is a high value crop. If you can eradicate the infection and save a crop rather than losing a percentage of the harvest, then it’s a financial improvement.

“If there is more high-quality coffee, then from an economics perspective, that should mean coffee isn’t quite so expensive. I’m not sure it’s going to drop the price, but it might prevent it from going up dramatically if there is a coffee shortage.”

The software system developed by Master’s student Chris Napier uses colored lattice squares to discover the size, shape, and number of berries as part of the anomaly-detection procedure – something that could lead to the technology being used in other crops.

“With a lot of farmers now relying on drone technology, they can fly over a particular crop and with this software, they can very quickly identify areas affected by a range of different pathogens,” he said.

“We can adapt this to many different agricultural crops. This could be used for detecting infestation when you need to look at the understory of the plant rather than just on top, so it could be very useful in crops that have bunches and groups, such as grapes.”

Reference: “Coffee Berry pathogen anomaly detection using colour and shape separation via L-systems” by Chris C. Napier, David M. Cook and Leisa J. Armstrong, 19 March 2025, BIO Web of Conferences.
DOI: 10.1051/bioconf/202516705003

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