New tools measure coffee, cacao quality

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization (PhilMech) have developed inexpensive yet accurate measurement tools for coffee and cacao farmers that will boost their productivity.

Philmech’s R&D team, in partnership with a local electronic company, has already developed a prototype unit coffee moisture meter using a capacitive sensor oscillator circuit for both green coffee beans and coffee parchments.

The prototype moisture meter is sufficiently accurate for three coffee varieties namely coffea arabica, coffea liberica, and coffea canephora for both green coffee beans and coffee parchments.

DOST-PCAARRD said the determination of the amount of moisture content in coffee parchment and beans is essential to maintain high cupping quality.

Green coffee bean with high moisture content (greater than 12 percent wet basis), can deteriorate due to bacteria, mold, and yeast.

On the other hand, coffee beans with less than nine percent moisture will shrink and become distorted, making them appear as low quality beans. To ensure the best quality in coffee, monitoring its moisture content at all times after it is dried is necessary to command a better price at the time of sale.

DOST-PCAARRD said local  coffee farmers, buyers, and processors need not employ the traditional, subjective, slow, destructive and costly way of moisture content measurement.

Another Philmech R&D team has developed a new device that instantly measures quality of freshness of cacao beans.

The sensor device is portable and easy to use. By just placing a few drops of the bean’s watery mucilage into the sensor receptacle, one can already assess the freshness of harvested cacao bean by measuring its sugar content and alcohol content.

The sensor device can also tell if the bean is adulterated by assessing its water content and salinity.

A programmable software does the measurement and shows the results in a liquid crystal display similar to laptop monitors.

This technology will be useful to suppliers, buyers of freshly harvested cacao beans and processors of chocolates. High quality and good tasting chocolates come from quality freshly harvested cacao beans.  It is important that the raw materials are assessed prior to processing. 

Cacao beans with high sugar content and have not exhibited onset of fermentation are regarded as high quality.

Using cacao quality sensor will encourage growers to command a better price.  Buyers will be assured that the quality of the beans sold to them is within acceptable range.

Similarly, processors will benefit from using high quality cacao beans as raw materials for chocolate processing.

This sensor has been tested in Davao and plans to test it in other cacao-growing regions in the Philippines are underway. This is to further ascertain its performance and accuracy.

Patent application for this technology is currently being arranged.