Chikmagalur.

At a glance

The hill district of Karnataka's Malnad region, on the edge of the Deccan plateau. It grows arabica and robusta in almost equal measure, and Chikmagalur Arabica carries a GI tag.¹²³

Coffee grows at

700–1,200 m³

Rainfall

1,000–4,500 mm³

Arabica

37,000 ha29,000 t a year³

Robusta

23,000 ha30,000 t a year³

GI tag

Chikmagalur Arabicasince 2019¹

How it grows

• All Indian coffee grows under shade, here under evergreen leguminous trees, in the biodiversity hotspots of the Ghats.³⁴

Climate and harvest

Blossom showers³ Picking (hatched)⁵

• Rainfall ranges from 1,000 mm to 4,500 mm a year, the widest spread of any region in this journal.³
• Robusta flowers earlier, after blossom showers in February–March, with backing showers in March–April.³
• Arabica flowers after the blossom showers of March–April (25–40 mm), followed by backing showers in April–May.³
• Arabica is picked from November to January.⁵
• Robusta is picked from December to February.⁵

Processing

[TBC] Not yet sourced for this region.

History

• The district holds the Bababudangiri hills, where coffee in India is said to have begun with seven seeds planted around 1600.⁴³

Sources

1. Drishti IAS: Five coffee varieties got GI tag (30 Mar 2019)
2. SCC Online: GI certification for five varieties of Indian coffee (30 Mar 2019)
3. Coffee Board of India: Coffee regions of India
4. Coffee Board of India: Coffees of India
5. StoneX: USDA attaché on India's 2023/24 coffee crop
6. Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (elevation data for the map). Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data, processed by ESA; © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA.
7. Town positions: Chikmagalur, Mudigere, Kalasa (Wikipedia).