In most developing countries, coffee production provides an important option for income generation for resource poor households and is thus essential in socio-economic development of these countries. Its significance is under- scored by the fact that there are about 75 coffee- producing countries, mainly in South America, Africa and Asia, employing about 10 million laborers and producing approximately 6 million tons annually on a total area of over 10 million ha (ICARD, 2002). Today, Arabica coffee dominates contemporary coffee trade even though its share fell from about 80% of world production during the 1960s to around 60% by the turn of century, initially because of high growth of Robusta production in Brazil, Vietnam and parts of Africa but more recently because of the emergency of Asia as the world’s leading Robusta producing region (Pillai, 1984; Richerzhagen and Virchow, 2002).