The Microscopic Structure of the Coffee Bean

Abstract

The histology of the coffee bean was established many years ago (Winton and Winton, 1939); however until now, the ultrastructure of this material has not been described. So far we have been unable to find a single printed work at the transmission electron microscope level apart from our own publication (Dentan, 1979). (We apologise to authors whose publications we may have missed in our literature search.) One reason for this lack of interest could be that the cytological and histological studies pose a number of technical problems. The thickness of the cell walls, and the close packing of storage material within the cytoplasm of the coffee bean parenchyma cells do not permit easy fixation, embedding and sectioning. Therefore we include details of how these problems were solved.