A survey was made in order to find out the degree of variability in seed oil content exhibited by the varieties of Coffea arabica L. from the collection grown at the Campinas Central Experiment Station. The extraction with ethylic ether revealed that the lowest oil percentage was present in the Amarelo de Botucatu (10.51 per cent) and Mokka (10.91) coffees, while the Mucronata (17.75), Red Bourbon (17.07) and São Bernardo (17.06 per cent) showed the highest oil content. In a general way a higher amount of oil was found in samples of pulped coffee seeds and lower values in samples of dried cherries, not submitted to pulping operation. Among the entries of a group of selected strains from an experiment located in Campinas, the typica variety taken as a standard had 13.26 per cent of oil in the seed, while several strains of Mundo Novo coffee revealed a significantly higher oil content (Table 2). The results obtained with other coffee samples from the same experiment (Table 3) also revealed that some strains of Mundo Novo present a higher amount of oil than the Sumatra (typica) standard. Among the highest yielding Mundo Novo coffee strains significant difference were found, the lowest oil percentage being obtained in the strain CP 387-17 and the highest ones in the strains CP 385-20, CP 390-2, CP 374-3, P 381-1 and CP 379-19, indicating that a successful selection could be done in order to obtain coffee strains with low and high seed oil content.