Gesha is a long-bean Ethiopia selection with unique cup character. Gesha is the name of the town in Western Ethiopia where the original samples were collected. Spelling it as Geisha appears to be part of the marketing of the coffee, as it was spelled as Gesha in the variety
Gayo is ethnic group from the area of Aceh Sumatra around Lake Takengon. They use the name Gayo Coffee to market their production. The Acehnese are a different... collections and gardens of the ICO up until it became commercialized as a single variety coffee offering.
Gesha is a long-bean Ethiopia cultivar
USDA is (obviously) the United States Department of Agriculture. USDA also had coffee plant breeding programs in the past and one variety they distributed to Indonesia and was... selection with unique cup character. It is most famously grown on the Jaramillo plot at Hacienda Esmeralda in Panama by the Peterson family. It has now been broadly planted in other Central America countries and beyond to capitalize on the high price it has fetched.
It was distributed from the garden at CATIE in Costa Rica, and displayed some rust-resistant properties.
There is not a single Gesha type. Most seeds came from CATIE and the plot was reported from the first plantings in Panama as being mixed, with a bronze-leaf upright type, and green-leaf compact type. (Referring to the color of the new young leaf on the plant.) Since then, and it’s spread all over Latin America and across the world, the variety has become only more unclear in terms of traceability. Indeed it tended to hybridize over time with other varieties planted around it, and the clarity of the cup character changing along with it. (ArabicaArabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the taxonomic species name of the genus responsible for around 75% of the worlds commercial coffee crop.: Arabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the... is self pollinating and does not tend to hybridize but in time, and with many instances of planting, it will).
