The Centro de Investigação das Ferrugens do Cafeeiro (CIFC) was officially created in 1955 with the support of the Governments of Portugal and United States of America (Agreement FO-PO-5, April 29, 1955; Project F.O.A. 72-11-004). CIFC was then integrated at Junta de Investigação do Ultramar (JIU), which was designated by Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (IICT) since 1982. IICT was extinguished on 31 of July, 2015 and CIFC was integrated at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA)/ Universidade de Lisboa.



CIFC founder and Director was the well known portuguese plant pathologist Prof. António Branquinho D’Oliveira. After his retirement in 1973, his collaborator Dr. Carlos Rodrigues Jr. was assigned Director of CIFC from 1973 till 2004.



The foundation of CIFC, at Oeiras, had as main objective to centralize the research on coffee rusts in one place with no danger of introducing these diseases or new races of the pathogens in the coffee producing regions of the world. Its chief aims was to assist coffee research centers in the Portuguese Overseas Territories and in coffee growing countries throughout the world, in the selection of rust resistant coffee plants, and training of scientists on the study of these diseases. Since 1955, CIFC has played a central role in the development of an International Research Network of more than 40 coffee growing countries on coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix) and after 1989 also on coffee berry disease (Colletotrichum kahawae).