No origin matches that.
Home of the Hibrido de Timor — the natural cross that rust-resistant breeding worldwide is built on.
Production figures are for the 2024 calendar year.
Coffee is Timor-Leste's dominant agricultural export and the livelihood of a large share of rural households. It grows in the central mountains — Ermera above all, with Ainaro, Liquiçá and Aileu — mostly in semi-abandoned Portuguese-era plantings that have reverted to something close to forest garden. Much of it is unintentionally organic: the trees are old, shade is heavy, and almost nobody can afford inputs.
Its significance to the coffee world is genetic. Sometime early in the twentieth century a spontaneous cross between Arabica and Robusta appeared on the island — the Hibrido de Timor — carrying Robusta's leaf rust resistance in a plant that behaves like Arabica. Nearly every rust-resistant variety planted anywhere since, the whole Catimor and Sarchimor family included, descends from it. An island producing well under a percent of the world's coffee is the reason a large fraction of the rest is still standing.
Shaded provinces contain growing areas; the crop covers only part of each.
The dominant producing district, and the historical plantation centre.
The high central districts south and east of Ermera.
The northern coastal district, dropping from the mountains to the sea.
Soft, sweet and clean, with a light-to-medium body, gentle citrus and cocoa, and often a distinct herbal or woody note from the old shaded plantings. Well-processed washed lots from Ermera are delicate and tea-like; the more rustic ones carry the earthy, slightly fermented character common to hand-processed island coffee.
The Portuguese planted coffee from the early nineteenth century and it became the colony's main export. The Hibrido de Timor was identified in plantations here and collected for breeding work in Portugal from the 1950s. The Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999 and the violence surrounding independence badly damaged the sector; cooperatives rebuilt much of it from the 2000s.
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Country outlines and shaded relief from Natural Earth, which places them in the public domain.
Growing-region markers indicate an area. They are not surveyed farm locations and should not be read as any.