Fungus puts whole coffee industry in peril

A fungus is threatening to ruin everyone's favorite morning beverage, the coffee.

Nicknamed 'coffee rust', the fungus has already brought about $1 billion worth of damage to the coffee industry in Latin America and could further cut into production by as much as 40%. Other consequences might derive from this as half a million jobs could be lost and the price for caffeine will notably rise.

The Texas A&M's World Coffee Research center received a $5 million budget to find a way to erradicate the fungus.

The coffee rust is most deadly to the arabica beans, which are considered to be the ingredient for higher-end products.

The worst case scenario is that people will have to come up with 'extraordinarily high prices for those coffees, if you can find them at all,' says a Texas A&M researcher.

So far, the situation looks gloomy as 'we don't see an end in sight anytime soon' for the deadly coffee fungus