Finland Scientists Create Lab-Grown Coffee With No "Environmental Pitfalls"

Researchers at the Finnish technical research institute VTT believe their coffee would avoid many of the environmental pitfalls associated with the mass production.

Latte drinkers may in the future be sipping on java sourced from a petri dish rather than a plantation, say scientists behind a new technique to grow what they hope to be sustainable coffee in a lab.

"It's really coffee, because there is nothing else than coffee material in the product," Heiko Rischer tells AFP, pointing to a dish of light brown powder.

His team of researchers at the Finnish technical research institute VTT believe their coffee would avoid many of the environmental pitfalls associated with the mass production of one of the world's favourite drinks.

The coffee is not ground from beans, but instead grown from a cluster of coffee plant cells under closely controlled temperature, light and oxygen conditions in a bioreactor.