ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Crop and Product Physiology
This article is part of the Research TopicUnderstanding and Improving Coffee ResilienceView all articles
Characterizing the Plant Functional Traits of Coffee Agroecosystems in Indonesia
Provisionally accepted
Tin Widyani Satriawan1*
Xiangzhong Luo1*
Liyao Yu1Shafira Nur Ramdhania2Luri Nurlaila Syahid1Meine van Noordwijk3
Kurniatun Hairiah4Rika Ratna Sari4Endah Sulistyawati2
Massimo Lupascu1Noviana Budianti2- 1National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
- 2Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia
- 3Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, Netherlands
- 4Universitas Brawijaya, Malang, Indonesia
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Indonesia, the world's third-largest coffee producer, is rapidly expanding coffee agroecosystems, often at the expense of deforestation. Understanding the ecophysiology of coffee agroecosystems is thus critical for assessing their impacts on the regional carbon cycle. However, current knowledge of coffee ecophysiology is largely derived from studies in Central and South America and equatorial Africa, with few observations from Indonesia despite its distinct climatic context and large area. In this study, we measured plant functional traits (i.e., leaf structural, physiological, and chemical traits) of coffee plants at four distinct sites in Java, Indonesia. Here, we measured leaf structural, physiological, and chemical traits of coffee at four sites in Java to assess spatial and seasonal variation, and their links to shade and reproductive output. We found that physiological traits showed the largest within-site variation, while structural traits varied most strongly among sites. Across seasons, photosynthetic traits (i.e., light-saturated photosynthetic rate Amax and maximum carboxylation rate Vcmax) exhibited pronounced seasonality at a robusta (C. canephora) coffee site, whereas arabica coffee (C. arabica) and hybrid (C. arabica x C. canephora) sites showed greater seasonal shifts in structural traits. We also found that Denser shade promoted resource-acquisitive strategies (higher photosynthetic capacity, lower leaf mass per area), but this did not translate into greater fruit production. Our study provides one of the first field-based assessments of the ecophysiology of coffee agroecosystems in Indonesia, which will advance our understanding of coffee expansion on the regional carbon cycle.
Keywords: agroforestry, Coffea sp., Ecophysiology, Leaf economic spectrum, Photosynthesis
Received: 10 Nov 2025; Accepted: 15 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Satriawan, Luo, Yu, Ramdhania, Syahid, van Noordwijk, Hairiah, Sari, Sulistyawati, Lupascu and Budianti. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Tin Widyani Satriawan
Xiangzhong Luo
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