Fading aroma. The gene pool of wild arabica coffee plants is under threat. Over 90% of the coffee we drink is arabica, and the highland forests of Ethiopia from which it originates, and where wild coffee plants make up most of the underbrush, have lost more than half of their trees in the past 30 years. When cultivated coffee on plantations outside Ethiopia is devastated by the diseases from which they are in peril, breeders turn to the Ethiopian gene pool for help.