Ghent University. Faculty of Bioscience Engineering
Abstract
The specialty coffee market is constantly growing mainly due to an increased interest in taste and other quality attributes of high quality coffee. This growing demand for high quality coffee triggered coffee producing countries to produce specialty coffees for the top-end markets. In Ethiopia, using ‘total specialty cup scores’, top quality coffees are grouped into Q1 (specialty 1, score: ≥85) and Q2 (specialty 2, score: 80 - 80% is Q2 coffee. Further, this PhD also revealed that dry processing positively influences coffee quality and allows enhancing preliminary total quality, overall cup preference and aroma attributes. In addition, because of easy management, low production cost and sustainability, dry processing should be recommended over washing methods. Finally, a NIRS model predicting coffee cup quality from green bean NIR spectra was also successfully developed. The model is a promising tool for fast and accurate assessment (i.e. Q1 vs. Q2) of specialty coffee quality. All together this PhD identified important biophysical factors that control coffee bean quality along the coffee value chain, which opens introduction of concepts and methodologies enhancing coffee quality
