Biography
Flavio Luis Schmidt completed his graduation, Master and PhD in Food Science at the University of Campinas/Brazil. Currently, he is a teacher/researcher at the same university, supervising graduation, master and PhD students in Fruits and Vegetable Laboratory with emphasis in beverage, fermentation and coffee products.
Abstract
Carbonic maceration is a post-harvest fermentation process used by coffee producers to increase the product quality and added value to the product. As this is a new process, there is little information about the microbiota involved. To understand that, 3 fermentation processes were carried out in 2 Brazilian farms. The coffees cherries were fermented on different containers and sampled every 24 hours, up to the end of fermentation (at least 6 days). The samples were frozen and sent to metagenomic analysis. In the laboratory, the sample was mixed with saline solution until the fruit break the bark and exposure the beans and handly homogenized. The genetic material was extracted from this liquid and a two-step PCR was used to prepare the library and the sequencing was done in a MiSeq system, using the standard Illumina primers. For bacterial analysis, the genetic material used came from the 16S rRNA gene, and for fungus from the ITS1 gene. A huge number of 140 species of bacteria and 209 fungi species were identified in the samples, with at least 5504 fungus and 4090 bacteria sequences in a single sample. The most prominent identified sequences were from Enterobacteriaceae, Cladosporiaceae, and Saccharomycetaceae family, respectively for bacterias, fungus and yeasts. Different species of fermentative microorganisms were identified, including Acetobacter, Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces. The metagenomic analysis brought very complete information about the microbial population present on these fermentation processes and is the first step to understand the chemical changes in the coffee beans.
Biography
Ana Valeria Ulhano Braga has completed her graduation in Biological Sciences in 2010 as well as she completed her Master Degree in Food Technology at the University of Campinas in 2016 and then started her PhD in the laboratory of Fruit and Vegetable, where she studies coffee fermentation processes.
Abstract
Coffee is the most consumed beverage in the world, and Brazil is its largest producer. The quality of green coffee is directly influenced by the agriculture practices, harvest, and post-harvest procedures, drying and storage conditions. In the last few years, many producers introduced carbonic maceration to increase quality parameters. In this process, there is no growing of filamentous fungi and the fermentation can be longer than in an open atmosphere. A preliminary test of this process showed a huge increase in beverage quality: the SCA (Specialty Coffee Association) evaluation varied from 78 for the control to 86 points for a 6-day fermented coffee. Based on these results, the other 14 fermentation processes were carried out in 2 Brazil farms, being 2 with Robusta and 12 with Abica species of different varieties, yellow and red Catuai, yellow and red Icatu, Mundo Novo, Tupi, and Obata. The fermentation was carried out in different size containers from 20 to 1000L, monitoring the ambient and coffee temperatures. After fermentation, the coffee was dried and all the samples were sensory evaluated by 3 Q-graders certified by SCA. Among samples, 12 processes increased in SCA scores up to 6, 2 points, showing more complex flavor attributes. The carbonic maceration is a simple fermentation process that can increase the quality of coffee beverage and it is important for the producers and the economy since it adds value to the product.