Agro – climate and its impact on coffee cultivation in Sana’a governorate “Yemen”

Abstract EN

Yemen has been a center of the commercial coffee cultivation and trading since the 16th century and local production is said to date back to the 5th centaury.

Export of coffee is mostly done through the port of Mocha.

The Republic of Yemen (ROY) is located in the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula, an area that is categorized, as one of the arid regions of the world, with a land area is 527,890 square kilometers excluding the many islands in Red See and Arabian Sea.

It was called Yemen Felix (Al-Yaman Assa’eed) or Arabia Felix.

Yemen has a unique multi-climatic zones and year-round-cropping due to its physiographic and location.

It was known as the food basket of Arabia, because of its fertile land and active population as well as the intensive effort applied in farmland.

Coffee crop is considered as a cash crop, increasing the national income, and foreign currency.

In the recent years there is a sharp decrease in the production of coffee, because the presence of other competitive crop especially Qat.

At present the land under coffee cultivation is 9115 hectares and Qat cultivation is 41,173 hectares in Sana’a governorate.

Coffee cultivation needs favorable climatic conditions with temperature between 10-30 ºC and rainfall 800mm well distributed through out the growing period.

It needs fertile land and good draining soil with a minimum depth of 2 m and PH 5.2 to 7.

The productivity of coffee varies every year in the area under coffee cultivation recorded in 1990 was 7205 hectares and production is 1,771 ton, but in 2002cultivated area is 9165.21 hectares and number of coffee trees is 10219844.

Coffee Arabica is the best quality and it is an indigenous variety.

It is essential to study the cause for the declining productivity of coffee and find solution to the problem.