The World of Coffee

Coffee Beans

A coffee bean is the seed of the coffee plant (the pit inside the red or purple fruit). The fruits, coffee cherries or coffee berries, most commonly contain two stones with their flat sides together. Coffee beans consist mostly of endosperm that contains 0.8 - 2.5 % caffeine, which is one of the main reasons the plants are cultivated. Coffee beans are an important export product for some countries.

Regions

Coffee is a tropical plant that grows primarily in a tropical band around the globe between the tropic of cancer (23 deg north latitude) and the tropic of Capricorn (23 deg south latitude). There are about 35 countries in this band or zone around the equator that are regarded as the primary coffee producing nations.