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About
Centro de Investigação das Ferrugens do Cafeeiro (CIFC) is a research and advanced training Center of the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA) - Universidade de Lisboa (ULisboa).
Previously, CIFC was localized in Oeiras, a town on the northern bank of the Tagus River estuary in the western part of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Since 1955, CIFC has occupied a building within the National Institute of Agrarian and Veterinary Research (INIAV) campus, formerly known as the National Agronomic Station. This location has provided CIFC with a strategic base for its research activities for nearly seven decades.
In 2015, CIFC became part of the School of Agriculture (ISA) at the University of Lisbon, aligning its research efforts with the Research Unit LEAF -Linking Landscape, Environment, Agriculture, and Food (https://www.isa.ulisboa.pt/en/leaf/presentation). CIFC's research infrastructure, including greenhouses and laboratories, is located on the ISA campus and within the Ajuda Botanical Garden.
Since its foundation in 1955, the main objective of CIFC activities has been the contribution to the development of coffee cultivars with durable resistance to quarantine main diseases: coffee leaf rust (CLR) and coffee berry disease (CBD).
The main beneficiaries of the activities carried out at CIFC are the coffee growers, in particular the millions of smallholder farmers, as cultivars with resistance to CLR and/or CBD will make them less dependent on the vagaries of the international coffee market and thus enable them to produce coffee in an economically and ecologically sustainable manner.
