Centro de Investigação das Ferrugens do Cafeeiro/ISA/ULisboa

Centro de Investigação das Ferrugens do Cafeeiro (CIFC), created in 1955, was integrated at Junta de Investigação do Ultramar (JIU), which was designated by Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (IICT) since 1982. IICT was extinguished on 31 of July, 2015 and CIFC was integrated at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA)/ Universidade de Lisboa. The foundation of CIFC, at Oeiras (Portugal), 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.