Method development for green coffee analysis and its possible application for group discrimination and correlation of green coffee chemistry with cupping quality

vi, 50 leavesDevelopment of an ion-exchange HPLC method to simultaneously determine certain organic acids and sugars in green coffee is described. Identifying and quantitating flavor relevant compounds in green coffee offers the potential for an objective measure of cup quality. Presently, a panel of trained experts who rely upon sensory discrimination, a subjective measure, determines coffee quality. Accurate quantitation of individual compounds was verified by single component fortification of green coffee samples and determination of recoveries. Typical recoveries were as follows: malic acid 100.7%, quinic acid 86.7%, citric acid 112.8%, lactic acid 100.0%, sucrose 93.6%, fructose 109.3% and glucose 110.2%. This method is the first to report simultaneous determination of two classes of green coffee components, and provides for a relatively quick and accurate means of determination. Future utilization of this method as a measure of coffee cup quality in green coffee has implications for future coffee breeding, flavor manipulation and genetic transformation