LONDON, June 18: If you crave the taste of coffee but can’t handle caffeine because it makes you jittery or keeps you awake at night, Japanese scientists may have the answer.

Researchers at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan have produced genetically modified coffee plants they say have less caffeine but taste just as good as the real thing.

“The caffeine content of these plants is reduced by up to 70 percent, indicating that it should be feasible to produce coffee beans that are intrinsically deficient in caffeine,” Shinjiro Ogita said in a report in science journal Nature on Wednesday.

The transgenic plants produced by Ogita and his team, who have been working on the research for seven years, are about a year old but it will take another four to five years before they will know the amount of caffeine in the bean.

Levels of caffeine depends on the type of coffee, how it is brewed and the strength of the brew.—Reuters