The antestia bug plagues coffee crops throughout East Africa. It damages coffee cherries and forces farmers to dispose of affected ones. Researchers hypothesize that as antestia bugs attack coffee cherries, perforating the skins, they either directly insert or allow in a toxin called methyl-pyrazine, which causes potato taste. Researchers also believe pyrazine may enter coffee cherries punctured by non-insect enemies too, like hail.

Antestia is rarely linked with the potato taste defect outside of Rwanda and Burundi. In Rwanda, the link between antestia and potato taste defect seems to be concentrated in the Eastern Province and in the West along the coast of Lake Kivu. Research on the relationship between antestia and potato taste defect has been limited to date, with only one other major research endeavor undertaken two decades ago in Burundi in the early 1990s. A team from the French agricultural research organization CIRAD (Center for International Cooperation in Agricultural Research for Development) undertook the first prominent research effort to establish linkages between the antestia bug and potato defect in the early 1990s. CIRAD investigated this relationship and tested methods of controlling the antestia bug. Authors Bouyjou, Cilas, Decazy, and Fourney published papers on the taste defect that posited a relationship between antestia and the potato defect. They noted that further research was needed to understand the nature of the connection between antestia bug populations and potato taste (Bouyjou, 1999; Cilas et al, 1998). Sadly, before the research team could complete their work, civil war engulfed Burundi, and shortly thereafter, the 1994 Rwandan genocide broke out. The conflict in Burundi did not end in a meaningful way until after peace agreements in 2002 and 2003, approximately ten years after CIRAD’s original research on potato taste.



Read the Global Knowledge Initiative’s analysis of the Rwandan Specialty Coffee Industry and the Antestia-Potato Taste Challenge



References:

Bouyjou B., D. B. (1999). Removing the "Potato Taste" from Burundian Arabica. Plantations, recherche, développement, 6 (2), 107-115.

Cilas, C., Bouyjou, B., & Decazy, B. (1998). Frequency and distribution of Antestiopsis orbitalis Westwood (Hem., Pentatomidae) in coffee plantations in Burundi: implications for sampling techniques. Journal of Applied Entomology, 122 (1-5), 601-606.

Source: The Global Knowledge Initiative