tldr: Seeds are incredibly important for plant reproduction but they are essential in the world of coffee – seeds allow farmers to continue growing more coffee, producers harvest coffee seeds to produce the global commodity that we call the coffee bean today. I talk about what plants produce seeds and breakdown the structure of angiosperms, the type of seed that Coffea plants produce.
It makes sense to start the Science Stuff in Coffee at the beginning (and end) of coffee’s journey – which is why I wanted to talk about seeds. What are seeds and what lives inside them? Why are seeds so important and how is it that coffee plant seeds are both the beginning and the end of our coffees journey?
What are seeds?
Seeds are one of the many ways that plants produce their offspring. About 350,000 plant species on Earth produce seeds as a result of reproduction. As this is the way that hundreds of thousands of plants reproduce, seeds are incredibly important. There are two main types of plants that produce seeds – our angiosperms and our gymnosperms
- angiosperms (angio = covered or enclosed by a seed or blood vessel): these contained seeds and are most commonly known as our flowering plants.
- gymnosperms (gymno = naked, stripped, bare): these are our ‘naked seeds’ and most plants in this family do not produce fruit to cover their seeds.
We’ll focus on angiosperms as our Coffea plant (the genus responsible for making our coffee) is one of these flowering seed producers. Flowering plants can produce their seeds in many different ways but most of the seeds in this family share three typical features; an embryo, food storage and a seed coat.
What’s inside a seed?
- The embryo is a small immature version of our plant. The embryo contains all the basic features of our future plant like roots, stem segments, shoot tips and seed leaves.
- The food supply does what it says on the tin. It contains enough fuel and building blocks like proteins, sugars and oils to feed our embryo and young plant as it matures. There needs to enough fuel to sustain our immature plant before it can make it’s own food using the sun and air via a process called photosynthesis. It’s worth noting that in Coffea plants, things like caffeine and antioxidants exist in this food supply.
- The seed coat is the protective jacket for the embryo and food supply. It aims to keep them both safe until the conditions are just right and our seed is activated. Only then can it begin sprouting – a process we call germination.
All angiosperm seeds are contained within a fruit. In the case of Coffea plants, the ripened ovary (fruits) are the beautifully red coffee cherries that coffee farmers grow and pick when ripe. The seed enclosed within the cherry is our green coffee bean that producers aim to pull safely out of this fleshy fruit through meticulous processing methods.
As you can see, seeds are at the start of life for the coffee plant but that same seed is picked, processed, dried and roasted to make our coffee bean – the bean that we enjoy in the comfort of our own homes.
Did you know: Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, opened in 2008 and offers safe, free and long-term storage of seed duplicates from gene banks and participating nations. It aims to securely conserve seeds that are of value for food and agriculture. As of June 2026, the bank secured 1.4 million seed samples in its vaults – an incredible feat.
We now know what seeds are but what happens next? What exactly happens to our dormant embryo when the conditions are ‘just right’ and how does that small humble seed become a lush, living and fruit-producing plant that so many people depend on for economical, social and leisurely purposes? We’ll cover the process of germination in a future Science Stuff in Coffee post.
Until our then, drink coffee and stay curious,
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