Me and my team did it to inspire and, more importantly, to create the tactics and details around how you, your organization, your startup  can know more about start working on coffee business.

However this deck continues my tradition of training step-by-step guides that give you the exact information I’ve used to run my introduction to coffee class. That includes references like :

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When asked “what does caffeine look like?” most people tend to answer that they have not actually seen caffeine, but that it is probably a brown substance. This is understandable but this wrong assumption shows the association be- tween caffeine and coffee.

A handful of people may answer that they remember something in chemistry laboratory class in high school. That there was something about the term sublimation. Besides these aspects just about everybody knows that caffeine has a stimulating and awakening effect when consumed, well known not only from coffee and different teas but also from caffeinated soft drinks.

Summarizing, caffeine is a well-researched chemical substance with interesting properties and at least its name is widely known.

Caffeine was first isolated from coffee beans in 1820 by the chemist F. Runge at the request of the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. At room conditions, pure caffeine is a white, odorless crystalline powder bitter in taste. It exhibits two different crystal forms in pure state and when crystallized in presence of water very typical whiskers are formed.

shows caffeine crystals extracted from coffee. Caffeine crystals can also be found frequently as sediments in coffee pro- pressing factories especially around roasting machines.

This is due to the previously mentioned effect of sublimation: at elevated temperatures caffeine can change from the solid to the vapor state directly without liquefaction as intermediate step. The name caffeine does not give any information about the chemical nature of the substance. It belongs to the group of methyl xanthine’s and carries the name 1,3,7-trimethylpurine-2,6-dione. The chemical structure

shows the high content of nitrogen in the caffeine molecule. The physiological effects of caffeine have been investigated for a long time and research is ongoing. Simplifying matters, positive and negative health effects have been declared, obviously depending on individual condition and consumed quantities. Important is, that the US Department of Health and Human Services classifies caffeine as a GRAS substance (generally recognized as safe).

Recently, the European Food Safety Authority stated, that “habitual caffeine consumption of 400 mg/day does not give rise to safety concerns for non-pregnant adults” . This amount corresponds roughly to five cups of regular drip coffee. Nevertheless, consumed quantities must be observed as the lethal amount in man is estimated as 10 g. Further information on the effects of caffeine on health refer to Chapter 20 in this book.

Caffeine content in green and roasted beans is roughly the same: mean values are 1.1 wt% for Arabica and 2.2 wt% for Robusta beans. It is often believed that caffeine content is reduced in roasted coffee due to sublimation. However, as weight of the bean decreases the total concentration in the bean remains roughly unchanged. Caffeine content in coffee beverages is dependent on the blend composition (% Robusta), the water to coffee ratio and extraction yields. Typical values (Arabica) are 80 , 120 mg per cup of drip coffee (150 mL) and 50,100 mg for espressos.

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The main topic that we’ll be discussing today are the papillae of the tongue, the innervation of the tongue, and the neural pathways to the brain. We’ll also be looking at the roles of the other sensations of touch, temperature and pain and smell with regards to how we taste our food. And towards. Therefore, our main and learning point for today are what senses are involved in taste, where taste is sensed, where it is processed within the brain, and how the taste signals are transmitted from the sensory organ to the brain.

overview

So, taste is a really interesting sense as it is the interaction of several specific signals. There are four of these and they include the gustatory or taste signals from gustatory cells on the taste buds, touch signals – in other words. Information on texture from mechanoreceptors in the oral cavity and this is sometimes referred to as mouth feel. Temperature and pain signals from bare nerve endings in the oral cavity are also provided. Olfactory or smell signals from the olfactory epithelium of the cribriform plate in the nasal cavity is our fourth and last signal. There are also some accessory structures assisting with detection of taste which we’ll talk about a little bit later. But, first, let’s have a look at the gustatory signaling pathway.

gustatory information

is detected by chemoreceptors on taste buds. Taste buds exist on taste papillae in the oral cavity and gustatory sensation is transmitted through three cranial nerves – the facial nerve, cranial nerve seven; the glossopharyngeal nerve, cranial nerve nine; and the vagus nerve, cranial nerve ten. Through these nerves, signals reach the brainstem where they synapse and are relayed to three main areas of the brain, and we’re going to go through these now in a little bit more detail.

most lingual papillae are on the upper surface of the tongue, however, there are also some papillae hanging out on the soft palate, the upper esophagus and on the epiglottis. There are a few different shapes of papillae found on different areas of the tongue and we’re going to go through them now, but keep in mind there’s essentially four different types of papillae and these are the vallate papillae, the fungiform papillae, the foliate papillae, and the filiform papillae. Just before we move on to talk about each of these papillae, I just wanted you to note that the filiform papillae do not contain taste buds and rather are accessory structures so we’ll talk about them a little bit later.

papillae

we’re going to get on to the papillae that are involved in gustatory signaling starting with the vallate papillae. Vallate papillae, also known as circumvallate papillae are arranged in a V-shape with the point of the V towards the throat as you can see on the diagram. They’re located immediately anterior to the terminal sulcus which divides the tongue into its anterior two-thirds – that is the body of the tongue – and posterior one third which is the root of the tongue. And there are only seven to twelve vallate papillae on the tongue but each papilla has several thousand taste buds around its base.

vallate papilla

is described as an inverted frustum shape which is a cone with the pointy top chopped off. And to show you this a little bit more clearly, let’s consider another diagram which we’re going to bring in right now. So, this is a close-up view of the dorsal surface of the tongue showing the different papillae, and as you can see the vallate papillae are highlighted. They have a moat-like structure around them which allows better clearance of detected taste stimuli from the taste buds at the base of the papillae. And, actually, the moat-like structure is where the name of these papillae is derived from. So the word “vallate” comes from the Latin which means surrounded by a wall.

we can also see a number of von Ebner’s glands, and these are minor salivary glands which secrete saliva around the base of the vallate papillae that’s helping to clear taste particles from the taste bud receptors. The glossopharyngeal nerve is the nerve that is responsible for taking the taste signals from these taste buds.

fungiform papillae

are the most common papillae found on the tongue with two hundred to four of them spread across the anterior two-thirds of the tongue but concentrated around the edge as demonstrated on the image. So, they’re termed fungiform as they are mushroom-shaped which is best displayed here, and as you can see, there are three to five taste buds per papilla highlighted here, and the facial nerve is the nerve that carries gustatory information from these taste buds back to the brain.

The final type of taste papillae that we’re going to talk about today are the foliate papillae. As you can see, these are ridge-like folds situated at the edge of the tongue towards the back of the oral cavity, and we have around about twenty foliate papillae in total with each papilla having several hundred taste buds. The more anterior foliate papillae are innervated by the facial nerve whilst the more posterior papillae send taste signals through the glossopharyngeal nerve.

nerves

you would have noticed that there are three nerves involved in gustation. Number one, the facial nerve; number two, the glossopharyngeal; and number three, the vagus nerve. So, we’ll follow taste sensations being picked up in the tongue along each nerve to their synapse in the brainstem and then we’ll talk about their common central pathway. And in the course of the following discussion, we’ll also talk about some ganglia.

Before we go on to talk about the ganglia though, you might be wondering what a ganglion is, so we’ll briefly talk through it right now. So, a ganglion is a collection of nerve cell bodies and these arise at specific anatomical locations throughout the body, and as you can see in the diagram, the ganglia of the taste pathway are highlighted and these are the otic ganglion, the geniculate ganglion, the pterygopalatine ganglion, the petrosal ganglion, and the nodose ganglion. So, let’s move on now to the nerves.

ganglia

The facial nerve is otherwise known as cranial nerve seven and taste from the anterior two-thirds of the tongue is transmitted into the chorda tympani which is a sensory branch of the facial nerve and this nerve passes into the middle ear and crosses the tympanic membrane. A variable degree of taste information can bypass the middle ear via the otic ganglion to hitch a ride on the greater petrosal nerve, and the chorda tympani and the greater petrosal nerve converge at the geniculate ganglion.

Taste from the palate travels along the greater petrosal nerve via the pterygopalatine ganglion where it communicates with the trigeminal nerve. After the convergence of the geniculate ganglion, the afferent fibers form the intermediate nerve which runs alongside but separate to the facial nerve proper. And both of these branches travel in the internal auditory meatus with the vestibulocochlear nerve and do note that the gustatory fibers of the intermediate nerve synapse in the rostral solitary nucleus. The rostral solitary nucleus is synonymous with the gustatory nucleus.

glossopharyngeal nerve

The glossopharyngeal nerve which is our cranial nerve nine is very important in this tutorial because it’s responsible for the majority of taste sensation. This is because it innervates the posterior third of the tongue including the vallate papillae which, if you remember back to our previous slides, house the majority of the taste buds. From the taste buds, nerve signals are transmitted in the lingual branches which travel towards the jugular foramen.

The inferior glossopharyngeal ganglia, also known as the petrosal or the petrous ganglion, contains the sensory cell bodies and it is situated just below the jugular foramen. The glossopharyngeal nerve enters the cranium through the jugular foramen with the vagus nerve and the accessory nerve and the afferent fibers travel through the superior glossopharyngeal or the lesser petrosal ganglion. They carry on into the medulla through the cerebellar pontine angle to synapse in the rostral solitary nucleus which is slightly caudal to the synapses of the facial nerve and you can see this on our diagram just here.

vagus nerve

The vagus nerve is cranial nerve ten, and we’ve highlighted superior laryngeal branch of the vagus nerve which carries taste information from taste buds on the laryngeal surface of the epiglottis. So, this branch joins the vagus nerve from the thoracic and abdominal internal organs and their sensory cell bodies form the inferior vagal ganglion. The afferent fibers into the cranium through the jugular foramen with the glossopharyngeal nerve and the accessory nerve and pass through the superior vagal ganglion and they synapse in the rostral solitary nucleus caudal to the synapses of the glossopharyngeal nerve.

Other projections of the vagus nerve such as those responsible for saliva secretion and gastric secretion and motility synapse in the solitary nucleus. And this explains why taste increases salivation and gastric activity. The vagus nerve is also an effector of the vomiting reflex so a bad taste can cause you to vomit. This is important evolutionarily as it’s allowed us to recognize and rapidly expel potentially harmful food based on their taste.

At the rostral solitary nucleus, the paths of the taste afferents converge as demonstrated. At this point, the fibers from each nerve mix and then they split into three pathways. So, the first pathway goes to the ventral posteromedial nucleus of the thalamus and then it moves onto the taste sensory cortex where we become aware of the sensation. The second lot of fibers travel to synapse in the pontine taste area before going on to terminate in the lateral hypothalamic area. And the third pathway also synapses in the pontine taste area and it runs to the amygdala.

sensory cortex

The taste sensory cortex communicates with the lateral hypothalamic area and amygdala and it’s generally accepted that the lateral hypothalamic area and amygdaloid body are responsible for appetite, satiety and other homeostatic mechanisms. The fact that the sensory cortex sends signals to these areas could be the reason we feel more satiated after experiencing taste we desire. And it’s important to note that the amygdala is involved in the motion and memory formation amongst other functions which is why we attach such strong emotions to food and perhaps why we crave certain foods in certain emotional states, for example, pizza or whatever it is that gives you comfort when you’re feeling down.

we’ve seen how the raw sensation of taste is detected and brought to our attention, and now, we’ll look at the other senses involved in sensing the flavor of a food starting with somatosensory pathways. And there are two parts of the somatosensory pathway – number one being touch and number two being temperature and pain, which are grouped together as they are transmitted by the same nerve fibers. Of course, let’s begin by looking at touch.

sensation of touch

throughout the oral cavity, the sensation of touch is detected by mechanoreceptors with the same nerve endings that are present in the rest of the body. Signals are carried by the maxillary branch of the trigeminal nerve which is shown here and the mandibular branch which is highlighted here. The branches converged at the trigeminal ganglion and then leave and enter the brainstem through the trigeminal trunk. In the medulla, the fibers decussate to the contralateral dorsal medial lemniscal pathway which carries the information to be registered in the brain. And this gives us information on the shape and on the texture of a food.

Moving on to the other aspect of the somatosensory component of taste which is temperature and pain. So temperature and pain are detected by bare nerve endings in the oral cavity and the peripheral pathway is the same as of that of the touch pathway passing through the maxillary and mandibular branches of the trigeminal nerve through the trigeminal ganglion and into the brainstem via the trigeminal trunk.

nerve synapse

In the medulla, the nerve synapse in the trigeminal spinal nucleus. The pathway then decussates to the spinothalamic trunk to ascend into the cortices and we gain information on the temperature of the food and detect dangers causing pain. FYI, spicy food is not a true taste and is, in fact, a sensation from pain and temperature fibers. actually when you’re eating your favorite curry, what you’re detecting is not taste per se but the pain from the heat that it’s causing you.

let’s now move on to discuss how the nose helps us taste things and we’ve changed our diagram for this because we want to be looking at a midline sagittal section through the nasal cavity and the brain and this image is from the medial aspect.

taste buds can actually only taste around five flavors – sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami which is that Japanese taste that you find in miso soup. the different combinations of these allow for the detection of a range of different tastes but this does not really account for the many taste that we can experience. olfaction – that is, our sense of smell – is actually really vital for the interpretation of taste and it’s detected by olfactory epithelium on the cribriform plate on the top of the nose.

Olfactory nerve

Olfactory nerve fibers penetrate through the cribriform plate to take smell signals into the olfactory bulb and from there, the information is relayed along the olfactory tract to synapse in the nuclei of the olfactory cortex. Notes that the olfactory cortex has multiple nuclei in different locations. Firstly, it has the dorsal medial thalamus which is responsible for the conscious component of smell, the amygdala, and the limbic system which is responsible for linking smell to emotions and memory.

we’ve been talking about how touch, temperature, pain and smell contribute to the experience of eating a delicious slice of pizza but how do they interact? So, let’s talk about the orbitofrontal cortex. The orbitofrontal cortex contains secondary cortices of gustation, sensation, olfaction and sight. And what does this mean? This means that connecting fibers from the primary cortices bring signals to the orbitofrontal cortex. And, here, information from the individual senses is combined to give us an overall impression of the food. The orbitofrontal cortex also has communicating fibers with the limbic system as well as the amygdala which allows us to attach emotion and to reward values to certain food experiences, and it also facilitates memory formation in relation to that food.

There’s a couple more things that are involved in the taste pathway if it wasn’t complicated enough. Though for things to be tasted, you need to expose the chemical area of the food. That it combine to a taste receptor on the gustatory cells and you need to get the food to the taste receptors. There are two main accessory structures which are involved in these and the first one is the filiform papillae which we mentioned earlier and the salivary glands. And, of course, we’re going to talk briefly about how each of these contributes to taste.

the filiform papillae

are these hair like structures and as we mentioned earlier, they have no taste function. Instead, they have mechanical functions. So the filiform papillae are really helpful in assisting with swallowing, with cleaning the mouth and it has a role in spreading saliva around the mouth. These functions are really important because they increase the chances of food particles passing over the taste receptors and it also helps with washing particles that have already been tasted out of the taste buds. Therefore, it can be seen that they work closely with the next accessory structure we’ll be discussing which is the salivary glands.

And there are three main pairs of salivary glands – the parotid glands, the submandibular glands and the sublingual glands. The salivary glands assist with taste by acting as a solvent for taste particles allowing them to be washed around the mouth and this increases the chances that each food particle will be tasted. It also facilitates clearance of detected taste particles from taste buds and the other way they help with taste detection is through the enzymes they produce as the enzymes that they produce start to digest food which exposes more molecules to bind with taste receptors.

minor salivary glands

There are also a couple of minor salivary glands such as von Ebner’s glands which we mentioned earlier when we spoke about the vallate papillae, and these glands assist with the clearance of detected food particles from taste buds and it folds around the vallate papillae and between the foliate papillae.

let’s give a mention to the clinical relevance of taste. So, if you remember at the beginning of the tutorial, we mentioned that we’re going to talk about a condition called dysgeusia which is a condition when taste perception is lost or distorted – lost meaning a complete loss or decreased ability to taste, distorted meaning anything from abnormal perception of a taste or perception of a taste in the absence of a taste stimulus also known as phantom taste.

people problem

around seven percent of people have a problem with taste or smell. And there are a few causes some of which include chemotherapy drugs, zinc deficiency, oral thrush, antibiotics and head injury. Dysgeusia can be very distressing and it can reduce a patient’s quality of life to a huge degree. Imagine, not being able to taste your favorite dinner or instead of tasting it as it’s meant to be, it tastes metallic.

So, the mainstay of managing this condition is to change the taste of the food eaten by, for example, adding more spices or condiments and drinking more water to rinse away bad taste. Unfortunately, there are no drug therapies to help alleviate the symptoms and it’s not really clear why taste is affected with any of these causes but hopefully with greater knowledge of the pathways involved in taste, we’ll be able to understand this soon. And understanding the factors contributing to taste will us to think of other ways to replace taste sensation if the detection in the mouth is damaged.

Summary

It was a little bit complicated but I’m sure you’re stuck with me. So, we’re going to just go over a summary of what we discussed today. And, today, we talked about the aspects of taste which include gustation, somatosensorial and olfaction. The pathways involved in each and mentioned that the sensations are combined and processed in the orbitofrontal cortex.

For gustation, taste is detected by taste buds on the taste papillae in the oral cavity. Then we looked at how the facial nerve. The glossopharyngeal nerve and the vagus nerve work together to carry taste sensation to the rostral solitary nucleus in the brainstem. From there, signals are passed superiorly by three different pathways to terminate in the taste sensory cortex. The amygdala and the lateral hypothalamic area.

Next, we talked about the somatosensory pathway which is divided into two parts – touch and temperature and pain – then we went over olfaction and its pathway. Finally, we mentioned dysgeusia which is a condition where knowledge of the taste pathway. May be relevant in discovering more understanding of what’s going on and developing ways to help those afflicted.

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When we drink a cup of coffee, cause from all five senses turn into signals in the brain, travel through complex circuitry and produce what we call flavor.

As you’ve probably realized if you’ve worked in coffee for a long time, not everyone perceives the same thing when tasting coffee. Individuals vary based on their level of experience, their genetic, how they are feeling that day, and many other factors. So, is it possible to form an agreement on exactly how a particular coffee tastes?

In other words, we can , whose perception of flavor is inherently subjective, produce data with almost machine-like precision? Are we fooling ourselves when we aim for agreement between people who have different memories, emotions, and experiences? Let’s dig a little deeper into a few of these sources of variation.

Genetics

First, it is well-known that genetic variation exists in taste sensitivity. If you’ve tasted one of those paper strips in high school biology class, you know what I’m talking about. There’s a gene for the receptor that determines how strongly a person perceives the bitterness of a compound called phenylthiocarbamide . Based on how intolerably bitter the strip is to a person, they are categorized as a “taster,” a “non taster,” or a “supertaster”.

However, the degree to which a person can taste PTC does not predict their sensitivity to other bitter compounds, let alone other tastes. There is some evidence that PTC taster status can influence coffee preference .

Taste bud distribution on the tongue also varies genetically. Some people taste more intensely because they have more taste receptor sites . Some people are “smell-blind,” or anomic, to specific odorants . Even our affinity for cilantro is partially genetic: people with a certain genotype more frequently report an unpleasant, soapy taste .

Memory and Experience

A person’s previous experience can affect which flavor attributes they notice when tasting a coffee. There are multiple elements to this, from subconscious associations to cultural culinary preferences.

Our past food experiences can influence our reaction to new flavors, including both how we describe them and their hedonic valence, or pleasantness. As any cupper knows, the more familiar we are with a particular food, the more nuances we notice.

What It Means for Coffee Professionals

So, how much does this matter for everyday operations, and what can we do about it?

Minimizing variation from other sources is also crucial in balancing individual variation. The more we can dial in the variables between cuppings, the more precise our sensory data and the more meaningful our conclusions.

The important part is not necessarily standardization across the entire industry, but clear communication within companies and within supply chains. Many coffee companies have developed extensive cupping protocols and standards. The terms and references in the Lexicon can serve as a useful complement to these. What is most important is that you can communicate within your own supply chain about what your product, the coffee, tastes like.

Academic sensory science, while a different exercise than cupping, can provide helpful principles. Here are a few practical tips, courtesy of Molly Spencer, one of the lead developers of the new flavor wheel:

1. Establish a training standard and calibrate yourself.

Consider implementing a procedure to make sure you’re all on the same page. When someone is learning cupping, test their accuracy. There is a lot of background flavor in a cup of coffee. spiking in flavor defects to a cup of coffee. This helps a novice cupper learn how the defects show up against the other flavor complexities of the cup.

2. Use warmup samples and references. 

Everyone who has evaluated flavor knows there are just some days when you’re more “tuned in” than others. Get in the zone before cupping by warming up with a few samples before you begin scoring.for familiar tastes, it’s helpful for everyone on your cupping team to experience the same reference. When they are describing a certain word, like blueberry flavor, they’re all on the same page about what the definition of that really is. Training to a common standard helps mitigate individual variation.

3. Take frequent breaks.

In sensory science, it is standard to evaluate no more than 6-8 samples at once. Molly says, Coffee is so complex, there is physiological fatigue because your tongue and nose can only take so much. If you’re evaluating a lot of samples, try to space them out in time to preserve acuity.

consistency in protocol is key. Minimizing the variation in the cupping process details can help decrease the noise in your data. This can be especially important for companies with staff and roasteries in multiple locations.

Variation between tasters is a significant factor in coffee cupping, but it’s one that can be partially overcome by honing our process. Even simple practices like coding cups and taking a few more breaks can vastly improve the precision of our data. This precision helps us learn even more about the coffees we roast and serve, and ultimately communicate more specifically about their uniqueness and value.

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Identified by a team of University of Miami researchers in 1996, umami is our fifth taste — the long-lost counterpart of four other tastes with which we are far more familiar, sweet, salty, sour and bitter. Since the research team published its findings in 2000, umami has seized the interest of other scientists, health professionals, food manufacturers and chefs around the world. Many people struggle to define umami, often calling it savory, meaty or rich. They try to explain it by referring to food examples of umami: a golden chicken soup, roasted shiitake mushrooms or navy beans simmered with the bone of a well-cured ham. Even though it wouldn’t be any easier to describe salty or sweet without referring to the way those tastes are represented in certain foods, umami comes off as somehow more exotic. That explains why some consumers are compelled and others leery about the sudden wave of interest in all things umami. “Some people think of umami as a newfangled, overly scientific term that they don’t need,” says Fuchsia Dunlop, author of Land of Plenty (W. W. Norton, 2003) — a Sichuan cookbook — and an expert on both cooking and current events in China. “But I think it’s tremendously useful because it explains so much of what we already know about traditional cooking. We’re just using the Japanese word for it. That makes it sound foreign, but it’s not foreign at all.”

What Is Umami?

As far back as 3,000 years ago, Greeks and Romans were carefully boosting what we now know as the umami in their foods by using a condiment made from fermented fish sauce. In 1825, in his famous treatise The Physiology of Taste, French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin offered the word “osmasome” for rich, meaty tastes, and he predicted that future chemists would probably figure out what triggered it. Finally, in the 20th century, Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda hung a lasting moniker on the taste and determined its source. In 1908, Ikeda began trying to replicate the flavor of a traditional soup he made from boiled kombu (one of the sea vegetables often called seaweed) and dried tuna. He mixed together salty, sweet, bitter and sour, but it was something altogether different. In his lab, he finally managed to isolate the substance that gave the broth its distinctive taste: glutamate, the most plentiful of the 20 amino acids that make up proteins. Ikeda named the taste of glutamate “umami,” most simply translated as “delicious.” (The flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate, or MSG, is the sodium salt of glutamate. Comprising water, sodium and glutamate, MSG acts on the same receptors as glutamate. For more, see “MSG: Cooks’ Cocaine?” in the sidebar.) Other scientists soon built upon Ikeda’s discovery with new revelations. Not only do other amino acids trigger this deliciousness, but there is also a second group of compounds that build the effect. These are nucleotides, the molecular building blocks of RNA and DNA, found in a wide range of foods, including shellfish, pork and mushrooms. They impart some umami on their own, but more important, they magnify the umami of foods rich in glutamates and other amino acids — foods like chicken, tomatoes, aged cheeses, fresh corn and almonds. When nucleotide-rich foods are added to foods rich in amino acids, the result is a flavorful synergy that heightens the drama. “That’s the key to umami cooking,” says chef David Kasabian, coauthor with his wife, Anna, of The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami (Universe, 2005), a virtual umami bible with scientific explanations, recipes from America’s top chefs, and the Kasabians’ own umami-accelerated versions of classics like meatloaf and chicken in wine. “When you put the basic umami and the synergizing umami together, the effect isn’t just additive — it’s multiplied. A basic tomato sauce has lots of umami, but when you add mushrooms, it has considerably more.”

Umami Flavor

Over the course of the past decade, scientists have discovered receptors housed in our taste buds that respond specifically to umami, just as there are receptors for sweet, salty, sour and bitter. When these receptors bind to glutamates and certain other amino acids and nucleotides, they send a signal to the brain. That signal combines with signals triggered by savory aromas to create a highly pleasant sensation concentrated in the orbitofrontal cortex, the section of the brain right above the eyes. “Umami is a separate taste quality mediated by separate receptors, “And we like the taste. It’s a savory, yummy quality.” The fact that our bodies are designed to recognize and enjoy umami tells us that foods with naturally occurring umami are good for us. “There aren’t that many taste receptors in the mouth, so one has to assume that there’s a long-term biological interest in detecting umami, Our sense of taste is a highly evolved mechanism that signals what we should and should not eat. All humans respond positively to the taste of sweets because sweet foods are a reliable source of calories. We may wish we could turn off this particular mechanism when coworkers leave a platter of brownies near the coffeemaker, but our foraging forebears relied on the instinctual preference for sweets to identify good sources of food energy.

We respond positively to the taste for salt because it contains minerals that help our bodies maintain a proper electrolyte balance.

We respond negatively — at least as infants — to bitter and sour, because those tastes warned early humans that something might be poisonous, unripe or spoiled. As adults, most of us enjoy bitter and sour flavors in small quantities that help heighten or highlight other flavors and aromas. Many researchers now believe that humans developed a taste for umami because it signals the presence of protein. The foods packing the greatest umami punch are the ones that provide proteins broken down into free amino acids. These “free” glutamates and other amino acids are created by fermenting, aging, toasting, roasting, braising, stewing — any process that breaks complete proteins into their constituent parts. Thus, an aged steak has more umami than a fresh one; raw eggs have umami but considerably more when cooked; winter squash goes wild with umami when slowly roasted. But some foods such as corn and peas are packed with umami when fresh. (For more foods teeming with umami, see “Umami Shopping List,” in the sidebar.) When we eat whole proteins, our digestive systems burn a lot of energy breaking them down into amino acids. The amino acids in umami-rich foods are already in a free state, so they are more quickly and easily digested than complete proteins. As the Kasabians put it, “Umami is the taste of amino acids that are ready for our bodies to use.” The free glutamates are immediately put to work in the intestines, where they fuel the overall digestive process.

Mindful Eating and Umami

Understanding these umami mechanisms isn’t just interesting — it’s useful, says Edmund Rolls, DSc, a professor at the Oxford Centre for Computational Neuroscience, who researches taste mechanisms and the brain. “Many people are interested in knowing what makes food palatable,” says Rolls, in part because this helps “promote the eating of good food at the expense of unhealthy foods.” Understanding the science of cuisine is important in this regard, he explains, because it helps us develop food preparations that are appropriate. “For instance,” he says, “some people don’t like the taste of nutritionally good foods like green vegetables, but you can enhance the flavor of these foods by adding umami.” By choosing foods that taste good — and understanding how to make them taste even better — we’re simply relying on the body’s basic wisdom to maintain a balanced diet and a healthy weight. Jacqueline Marcus, RD, a nutritionist who practices in Northfield, Ill., points out that we are born with basic instincts telling us which foods are good for us and how much we need to eat of them. Just watch how a baby gulps umami-rich breast milk, then pushes away from the mother when full. “The umami taste helps provide you with the sensation of being fed,” says Marcus, who’s been researching and working with umami for 12 years. “That’s essential in weight management. Foods with umami flavor are satisfying to the palate and support satiety, or fullness.” In a culture looking for ways to amplify eating pleasures without amplifying its already significant weight problems, that’s umami wisdom worth trying. This article has been updated. It originally appeared in the May 2012 issue of Experience Life magazine.

Umami Foods

Umami-rich foods are delicious on their own and can also make healthy foods like basic vegetables and legumes taste more enticing. In The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami (Universe, 2005), chef David Kasabian and his journalist wife, Anna, break down umami ingredients into two groups: basic umami (foods that impart umami through amino acids like glutamates) and synergizing umami (foods that add some umami and, especially, amplify the umami taste of the first group). Many foods have both basic and synergizing umami compounds. Here are a few examples:

Basic Umami

Corn, peas, tomatoes, red bell peppers, winter squash Almonds, walnuts and other tree nuts Sea vegetables, Duck, turkey, chicken (especially mature birds and dark meat), fresh and cured pork products (which are also synergizing), aged steaks, Aged and blue-veined cheeses, Fin fish (especially smoked, dried or pickled), fish sauce, and shellfish (which are also synergizing)

Fermented soy products like

soy sauce, tempeh and miso, Legumes, Black olives, Pickled plums (ume) and many other pickled vegetables and fruits

Synergizing Umami

Mushrooms, truffles and other fungi — the darker, the better, Pork, beef, lamb, turkey and chicken, Shellfish, especially oysters and uni (sea urchin), Darker-fleshed fin fish such as tuna, mackerel and salmon, Many sea vegetables, including nori and wakame

MSG: Cooks’ Cocaine?

Monosodium glutamate (MSG), the much-maligned flavor additive, has been at the center of a food controversy for years. Here’s what you need to know to make up your own mind about whether to enjoy MSG or avoid it. Shortly after chemist Kikunae Ikeda discovered that glutamates were the source of the deliciousness — what he dubbed the umami — in his soup, a Japanese company used his patent to manufacture a substance that would change cuisines around the world: monosodium glutamate. U.S. food manufacturers began incorporating MSG into a wide variety of processed foods in the 1930s and ’40s. Restaurants and home cooks also sprinkled it liberally. Then, in the 1960s, MSG experienced a public-relations disaster. The New England Journal of Medicine printed a letter from a physician who said that he and his friends felt dizzy and headachy after eating in Chinese restaurants and suggested that MSG might be the cause. Subsequent studies supported this conjecture, but most involved injecting rats with massive doses of MSG — far more than a person would ever eat. Some studies have not found any evidence that MSG poses a problem to most people who eat normally. Scientists who study umami insist that MSG is the same as the naturally occurring free glutamates that are found in food. Still, many health-conscious and food-sensitive individuals remain wary of MSG, noting that eating it makes them feel dehydrated, brain fogged, puffy or headachy. Those who suffer from migraines, chemical sensitivities or ADD/ADHD are often counseled by their health professionals to stay away from MSG at all costs. And many culinary experts see MSG as a cheap stand-in for high-quality ingredients and good preparation — the mark of a compromised food product or dish. “MSG is a shortcut to good taste,” says Chinese cooking expert Fuchsia Dunlop. “People often take greasy, junky food and add MSG to make it appealing. I call it the ‘cook’s cocaine.” Some processed foods that don’t contain MSG are full of other substances that deliver free glutamates: textured protein, sodium caseinate, hydrolyzed yeast and many more. Like MSG, the presence of such ingredients may indicate that whatever natural flavor these foods might once have had can no longer stand on their own. “Processed food is so handled and heated and stored that the natural amino acids are gone,” says David Kasabian, who with his wife, Anna, wrote The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami (Universe, 2005). “They have to include these ingredients to compensate for that loss.” Maggie Ward, RD, nutrition director of the UltraWellness Center in Lenox, Mass., says it’s best to get your umami from natural ingredients. “My preference is that people eat whole foods for health and healing,” Ward says. “The glutamates in MSG are not the way nature presented them, and I think people are much better off enjoying umami from natural sources like fish sauce, seaweed and shiitake mushrooms.”

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About the environmental factors that affect coffee flavor and sustainability. It’s important how the terroir determines have effect on the character of a coffee and the success of a crop. Among all the environmental factors that could affect a coffee plant in its lifetime, some, such as altitude, are impossible to alter. Others, such as soil nutrition and shade cover, can be altered, but this often requires vast capital expenditure. Our goal is to give baristas and coffee lovers a clearer picture of how certain aspects of terroir can affect a plant’s health and the success of a coffee farm. In this topic, we look a broad range of our experience and long research on the books.

Phenotype vs. Genotype

Nomenclature

Terroir is The character of the land and the farming environment. Environmental factors such as altitude, latitude, climate, soil condition, and farming practices affect a crop’s phenotype.

Phenotype The observable characteristics of an organism in a given terroir, resulting from the interaction of an organism’s genotype (genetic code) and the terroir.

Genotype The chemical composition of DNA that gives rise to a particular phenotype; the genetic code for a particular trait.

Great coffee is the result of a plant’s genotype and the terroir that surrounds it. The environmental factors of climate, soil, and farming techniques combine to create the terroir of a coffee farm. This topic explores how the terroir determines the character of a coffee and the success of a crop. Among all the environmental factors that could affect a coffee plant in its lifetime, some, such as altitude, are impossible to alter. Others, such as soil nutrition, can be altered, but only with vast capital expenditure. To get a clearer picture of how expensive farm management can be and how certain aspects of terroir can affect a plant’s phenotype, we conducted a broad range of interviews with scientists, agronomists and green buyers.

This course provides an overview of what factors you can control and how it can be done to produce a sustainable crop and a great tasting cup.

Origin – In the cloud forests of Kaffa, in southwest Ethiopia, Coffea arabica grows as an understory plant. Local tradition stipulates where the coffee can be gathered in the forests and who can harvest it. Coffee plants that grow in this type of heavily shaded terroir have a far lower yield than those grown in full sun on most of the intensively farmed large Brazilian plantations.

Many botanists consider southwest Ethiopia to be the birthplace of Arabica coffee, but the debate about its precise origin is not settled. In Southern Sudan, for example, a bit farther down the plateau, wild arabica ignores human-made borders.

The original terroir of coffee, in the ancient forests on the Boma plateau of Ethiopia and South Sudan, was quite different from that of the Arabian peninsula and the Port of Mocca, from where the global coffee trade first emerged in the sixteenth century. In the opinion of coffee’s leading taxonomist, Aaron Davies of Kew Gardens, it was two-way traffic for coffee across the Red Sea (Jeff Koehler, 2016). Coffee arrived in Yemen and, over time, genetic strains adapted to Yemen’s dryer terroir and poor soil. Eventually, these varieties returned to Ethiopia with certain improvements.

The Taxonomy of C. Arabica – Why isn’t it Called C.Aethiopica?

In 1753, Carl Linnaeus, the originator of plant taxonomy, “unintentionally hijacked Ethiopia’s proprietorship of coffee,” according to writer-researcher Jeff Koehler. Linnaeus had already arrived at the name Coffea (C.), using his new system of classifying plants. In his definitive work Species Plantarum, he added the word arabica (from Arabia) to the passage about coffee. Koehler explains –

A decade or so later he published Potus Coffea, an eighteen-page pamphlet made of rag scrap with words running to the edges, adding that the plant grew spontaneously in “Arabic felici and Aethiopia”. It was too late. He had named it Coffea arabica, not Coffea aethiopica, and Arabia would continue to be regarded in the public mind as the original source of coffee.

Even the earliest-known writing on the subject of coffee, a treatise by Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri called The Best Defense for the Legitimacy of Coffee, first published in 1558, regarded the origins of coffee to be in Arabia. It wasn’t until Scottish explorer James Bruce ventured into Kaffa in 1769 that Europeans had any evidence as to the origins of arabica coffee. Bruce’s message is reported to have been considered too wondrous to be true, however, and it was widely ignored.

Present-Day Production Methods

Global coffee production worldwide is largely in the hands of smallholder farmers, totaling an estimated 100 million coffee farmers. (F. E. Vega et al., 2003) This means the livelihood-value of coffee farming is immense. In Ethiopia, about twelve million smallholder farming households account for an estimated 95 percent of agricultural production and 85 percent of all employment. The majority of coffee production is carried out as garden coffee, grown in amongst other crops. Only 5 percent of Ethiopia’s coffee production comes from plantations. (Jeff Koehler, 2016) The third means of production comes from an agroforestry practice known as semi forest, wherein some trees are pruned and some of the forest canopy is thinned in order to manipulate the available sunlight coming to the plants, which increases their yields.

In other parts of the world, such as Brazil, coffee is grown on huge plantations using intensive farming techniques involving a high degree of automation — in particular, mechanical harvesting and sorting. Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer, accounting for around 40 percent of the world’s arabica coffee production, yet in spite of the increased level of technology, 3.5 million Brazilians depend on coffee for their livelihoods.

not every terroir is suitable for high levels of automation, and as global warming advances, it is expected that the suitable terroir for coffee production will shift to higher altitudes and lower latitudes. This is known as the upslope potential.

• Coffee is the dominant understory plant in most forests, there is a lot of competition for growth from other species.we need to know The Forest coffee production system is one of the popular systems available. This system is known for harboring wild coffee trees. The level of coffee genetic diversity in this system is relatively higher than the level of genetic diversity available in other production systems (semi-forest, garden, and larger private farms). But when we are talking about the level of plant species diversity available in most forests, coffee is not the dominant understory plant.
• There are various understory tree species growing in most of the forests. And the availability of diverse species basically creates strong competition among different species. Densely of spaced do the coffee shrubs tend to be in the forest and The level of coffee management intervention by the local community who live near the forest highly affects coffee tree population density. Where the level of intervention is minimal, coffee trees are found growing densely. However, those parts of the forest areas that are highly accessible by the local communities are characterized by sparsely populated coffee trees.
• coffee plants prefer a particular type of forest canopy and plants perform better in spaces where trees have been pruned, sometimes large trees have fallen and created gaps in the canopy but Coffee is naturally a shade-loving plant. Shade helps coffee trees to have a longer and more productive lifespan, with a consistent production pattern year after year. Thus, the nature of the forest canopy determines the inherent production potential of a given coffee variety. A lot of research has been conducted so far on coffee shade trees. A forest canopy that allows 20 percent of sunshine is supposed to be an ideal shade level for optimum and consistent production patterns. Coffee trees under such a shade level perform better than those trees under a closed canopy or on fully open farms.
• any planting occur in the forest And it’s the way of how they choose the variety is Legally, the local communities who live near the forest are not allowed to bring in and plan their own varieties (coffee or any other plants) in the forest. But in the other production systems like semiforest and garden coffee, farmers or local communities are allowed to do their own plantings.
• the plants that farmers grow as ‘garden coffee’, outside the forest is differ from the plants that grow within the forest because Varieties that grow in gardens and forest production systems have different characters. The main difference is their morphological (physical) appearance. The coffee trees in the forest are aged. If a [forest] tree is young, it is a little bit longer, with [fewer] primary/secondary/tertiary branches. Moreover, the trees in a forest appear less productive. And the reverse is true with garden coffee trees.
• Agroforestry is offer coffee plants more protection from diseases, compared with growing coffee outside the forest because Since coffee is a shade-loving plant, naturally, the level of abiotic/biotic stress will be very severe when the coffee is planted without shade or outside the forest. The level of sunlight received determines the level of leaf-to-crop ratio. Under open farms, the level of crop is very high and that a significant level of imbalance between leaf (food source) and crop (food sink) ratio. This causes overbearing (overproduction) dieback (tree death). Thus, agroforestry is an inevitable option to [ensure] healthy coffee trees and consistent level of production year after year.
• we think makes Ethiopian coffee taste so intensely floral is in their terroir, the genotype(s) and range of factors, like Coffee quality is a very complex trait. It is controlled by genetics (G) (genetic makeup of the coffee tree), environment (E) (altitude, soil, rainfall distribution, and other micro- and macro-climatic factors), and the interaction of both (G x E). Ethiopia is known as a center of origin and genetic diversity. There are a wide range of coffee varieties available in the country, which is one of the reasons behind the intense floral taste. Secondly, the availability of diverse agro-ecology (environment/terrior) interacting with different varieties could create a wide range of flavour notes in Ethiopia. Most Ethiopian coffees are known for their intense floral aftertaste. In particular, coffees from Yirgacheffe, Guji, Sidama, Gera, and Anfilo are known for their floral/ fruity/spice flavours.

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Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration on the farm

All life processes are supported by the simple sugar glucose. Glucose is both the primary source of energy for these processes and an important building block for many other compounds. Plants capture light energy through their leaves and use it to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose. The process is called ‘photosynthesis’. Photosynthesis is the source of all of the organic compounds and most of the energy used to sustain life on Earth. Oxygen is a by-product of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis  produces most of the oxygen in our atmosphere.

Plant leaves contain pigments called chlorophyll that absorb red and blue wavelengths of light and reflect green light, which is why leaves appear green to our eyes. When a chlorophyll molecule absorbs a single photon of light, it releases a single electron that is used to drive the reactions that create glucose.

Chlorophyll is contained in organelles (Structures within cells e.g. chloroplasts) known as chloroplasts. Inside the chloroplasts, the chlorophyll is stored (A milk pattern which involves a series of lines applied to the surface of a drink, using the pushing technique; this design harnesses the effect of the eddies to stretch each line around the edges of the cup. This pattern is an extension of the tulip design.) in the membrane of little green pancake-like stacks known as thylakoids(A thylakoid is a membrane-bound compartment inside chloroplasts and cyanobacteria). The light-dependent reactions take place at the thylakoid membrane that surrounds these little pancakes. It is also here at the that the oxygen we breathe is created.

• What Other Ingredients Do Plants Need to Produce Glucose?

Plants need carbon dioxide and water to produce glucose, which is made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. 6 CO2 + 6 H2O → C6H12O6 + 6 O2. (→ = Light energy plus chlorophyll).

A plant’s roots take up water from the soil. Xylem, a woody tissue containing bundles of capillaries, transports water and minerals throughout the plant. The carbon dioxide that is needed for photosynthesis comes directly from the atmosphere. It is taken into the leaves of plants through small pores known as stomata(The pores in a leaf that open and close when the plant requires to allow gases and moisture to diffuse in and out of the leaf when needed). The stomata allow the CO₂ to diffuse into the leaf.

In this image, you can see the leaves outer layer called the epidermis, peeled away to reveal the plant cells inside the leaf which contain the chloroplasts

Light-dependent Reactions

The first step in photosynthesis is the light-dependent reaction. In this step, chlorophyll molecules absorb photons and use this energy to release an energized electron. The electron is passed to a chain of molecules and enzymes that use it to create two energy-carrying molecules, ATP and NADPH. To replace the lost electrons, the chlorophyll splits water molecules, absorbing electrons and giving off oxygen gas and hydrogen ions: 2H2O → O2 + 4H+ + 4e–. ATP and NADPH then go on to take part in the light-independent (or ’dark’) reactions, of the Calvin cycle.The Calvin cycle is a circular series of reactions that use the energy-carrying molecules (ATP and NADPH) created in the light-dependent reactions to ‘fix’ carbon dioxide into organic molecules.In the Calvin cycle, one CO2 molecule reacts with ribulose bisphosphate (RuBP), a molecule with five carbon atoms, adding one carbon atom to create two molecules of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate (GA3P), containing three carbon atoms each. Five of every six molecules of GA3P produced in the cycle are used to regenerate RuBP. Five molecules of GA3P (with three carbon atoms each) create three molecules of RuBP (with five carbon atoms each). The sixth molecule of GA3P is used to create glucose. Two GA3P molecules create a single molecule of glucose containing six carbon atoms. The energy-carrying molecules ATP and NADPH drive the series of reactions forward.

The Calvin Cycle: this diagram shows you where each ingredient in the production of glucose enters the cycle

How Do Plants Make Use of Their Glucose Supply?

The glucose created during photosynthesis provides the energy for all the other cellular processes in the plant. Plants can transport glucose to where it is needed via a second type of vascular tissue called phloem. Xylem carries water and minerals up to the leaves to be used in photosynthesis, and phloem carries glucose back to other parts of the plant. The xylem and phloem together form the ‘veins’ in the leaves and stems of plants.When glucose reaches the cells, it can be used to release energy, taking in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide and water in a process known as respiration. This process takes place in organelles called mitochondria. Mitochondria are found in nearly all cells in both plants and animals. Respiration generates more of the energy-carrying molecules ATP and NADPH, which are then used to drive other cellular reactions. Because respiration consumes the glucose and oxygen created during photosynthesis and releases carbon dioxide, water, and energy, it can be thought of as the ‘opposite’ of photosynthesis.

Carbohydrate Synthesis and molecules effect

As well as functioning as an energy source used for respiration, plants can use glucose to create more complex carbohydrates, such as starch and cellulose, and a range of other molecules. Both starch and cellulose are made of long chains of glucose molecules joined together.

Cellulose: Cellulose is made of long, straight chains of glucose molecules. Cellulose chains join together to make long, strong fibers. These fibers form the cell walls that surround plant cells, which make them rigid and strong. Cellulose can’t be digested by animals, and so it forms a large part of the fiber content of your food. Although cellulose is carbonized during roasting, much of the structure of the cell walls remains intact. This structure determines the way coffee beans shatter during grinding. If the individual cells in the seeds are smaller, the beans will be harder and denser as a result. Some cellulose also breaks down during roasting to create citric acid. (T Nakabayashi, 1978.)

Starch: When glucose molecules are joined together in a different way, they form starch. Starch consists of branched chains of glucose molecules. At the end of each branch, glucose molecules can be added or removed as needed, which means starch can function as a glucose storage molecule. Starch is stored in all plant cells but especially in fruits, seeds, rhizomes, and tubers, and near the tips of branches, to prepare for the next growing season. Little if any starch is present in coffee beans.

Proteins: Plants use glucose, combined with nitrates from the soil, to create amino acids, the ‘building blocks’ of proteins. Nitrates in the soil are thus essential to plant growth. Nitrates occur naturally in soil; they are created by bacteria and during lightning strikes. Adding extra nitrates to the soil, in the form of organic matter (compost) or chemical fertilizer, can speed up plant growth considerably. The sulfur atoms found in proteins are an important part of many molecules responsible for the aromas of coffee. For example, certain mercaptans have a characteristic smell of roasted coffee.

Sucrose: Glucose can be converted to fructose, which joins to another molecule of glucose to create sucrose. Sucrose is the sugar that makes fruits taste sweet, enticing animals to eat the ripe fruit and thereby spread the mature seed. Sucrose in coffee seeds breaks down during roasting, taking part in caramelization and Maillard reactions to create many of the molecules responsible for coffee’s complex flavor. The sucrose also factors in the production of organic acids, including acetic and lactic acids.

Lipids: Glucose is also converted into lipids (fats). Lipids are a concentrated form of energy storage in plant seeds, and they support the growth of the seedling. Lipids in coffee include terpenes, which are responsible for some highly desirable flavor attributes (for example, limonene) and are thought to be responsible for some of coffee’s health benefits.

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The most intense solar radiation reaches a plant growing in the tropics when the sun is directly overhead. As the Earth tilts, the solar intensity is reduced because the radiation is spread over a larger area.With some simple trigonometry, you can see that a shift in the angle of the sun of 60° reduces the available sunlight by approximately half. A coffee farm located on the Tropic of Capricorn will receive direct sunlight on the 21st of June. But by the 22nd of December, the angle of the sun will have shifted from 23° 26′ south to 23° 26′ north. this change results in direct sunlight being spread over roughly 36 percent more land area, reducing the intensity of light where it strikes the earth. However, the times when the sun is directly overhead roughly corresponds with the rainy season, which can result in significant cloud cover obscuring the sun’s rays in an effect known as albedo. Based on observations on Reunion Island, sited in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, Bertrand et al., 2012 reported that solar radiation was negatively correlated with elevation, due to the frequent cloudy weather in the highlands, and positively correlated with temperature.’ In other words, increased solar radiation and temperature occurred in areas of lower elevation.

• During the season when the sun is directly overhead in the tropics, the combination of a lot of rain and a lot of light represents an intense growing phase for coffee plants. At this time of year, coffee plants tend to flower. Coffee farms located closer to the equator have some complexity regarding this seasonal fluctuation, however, because they can experience two rainy seasons per year. The biological clock of a coffee plant usually works on an annual cycle, but in some places on the equator (such as Colombia), some regions can have trees flowering while in a neighboring valley the farmers are harvesting.

Albedo

• Sunlight can reach a plant from below as well as from above. One means of this is by reflection from the Earth’s surface. In wine growing this is known as albedo. The extreme form of albedo comes from fresh snow, which will reflect over 80 percent of the solar radiation. High up, clouds in the stratosphere can reflect 70 percent of the solar radiation. Dark-colored, wet soil (typical of most coffee farms) will reflect only around 10 percent of the sun’s radiation. This is very similar to the amount that will be reflected from forest cover.The availability of sunlight is the major rate-limiting factor in the process of photosynthesis by coffee plants. For this reason, coffee farmers may thin the forest canopy as their plants mature.

Aspect

• Aspect refers to the orientation of a hillside relative to its compass bearing. It is an established principle of winemaking that the angle and orientation of a hillside can alter the flavour of a wine. The classic example of this is the difference between north- and south-facing slopes. If your coffee farm were on the Tropic of Capricorn in your rainy season, the sun will be aligned with the Tropic of Cancer. In this situation, a north-facing slope receives the most direct sunlight and a south-facing slope receives the least possible amount of light exposure.(Bertrand et al., 2012)concluded that the terroir of the coffee plant determined the sensory characteristics and chemical contents of its beans. They also found that the plant’s altitude and slope exposure created nuances in the sensory characteristics of coffees grown within a terroir.
• What’s the difference between Eastern or Western Aspect?

Plants with an east-facing aspect receive the first morning light, making them drier than plants with a west-facing aspect. The dew and rain begin to evaporate sooner in the day than they would on a west-facing aspect, so they have a head start. Plants with a west-facing aspect are usually warmer than those on a south-facing aspect, so ripening tends to occur more quickly. The last two decades have seen increases in the land area devoted to shade-grown coffee, but at the same time, non–shade-grown production has increased almost exponentially. ‘Shade-grown’ now describes around 24 percent of the land used for coffee. This amount is down from 43 percent in 1996. Yield-focused government incentives have been the driver for the widespread adoption of full-sun farming over the past two or three decades. Coffee research institutes created in the 1970s and 1980s , promoted the reduction or removal of shade cover.

• There is some controversy around the subject of shade. A disconnect exists between conservationists looking to maintain biodiversity and the viewpoint of yield-driven government incentives, aimed at increasing farmer prosperity. However, the literature points towards a happy medium here. Studies … have predominantly revealed that intermediate shade levels (approximately 35%–50%) produce the highest coffee yield, which is probably because of the balance maintained between optimal temperatures in shaded environments and optimal photosynthetic rates in unshaded environments … Because coffee yields are typically assessed independently of yield from timber, other crops, or ecosystem services, it may be difficult for governments and conservation institutes to weigh the benefits of diversified farming approaches. High yields don’t always equate with high quality.

Does Shade Grown Coffee Taste Better?

• it is clear that shade coverage is able to reduce average temperatures for coffee plants. using 45 percent shade netting found a significant difference between inner and outer leaf temperatures of coffee plants and a significant overall temperature drop. we measured differences of 4◦ C for inner leaves (measure from the trunk up to the sixth leaf) and 2◦ C for outer leaves. The same experiment accumulated sensory impressions of coffee grown under differing levels of shade cover. The chart below records the findings of their sensory panel. In addition, to testing full sun and shade, they also tested fruit load by removing a quarter and a half of the fruit from certain trees. The reason for this is that full sun plants tend to overbear and so the experiment sought to test if pruning could counteract this issue whilst still yielding good tasting coffee under full sun. The panel showed a clear preference for the shade-grown coffee over two growing seasons. A scientific study conducted on Reunion Island (the site of the Typica variety’s famous mutation into the Bourbon variety) collected sensory and chemical data from sixteen microclimates across the island. This research found a correlation between a cooler climate and positive sensory performance. Positive quality attributes such as acidity, fruity character and flavour quality were correlated and typical of coffees produced at cool climates.’
• One theory to explain why coffee may taste better in shade is the slower maturation of the fruit. In the case of the Reunion Island sensory trials, In a warmer micro-environment with high irradiance, coffee berries ripened faster in full sun than in shade. Therefore the harvest peak was delayed by about 1 month owing to shade. The slowed-down ripening process of coffee berries at higher elevations (lower air temperatures), or under shading, allows more time for complete bean filling Vast, yielding beans that are denser and far more intense in flavour than their neighbors grown at lower altitudes. Tropical climates are characterized by a reduced seasonal temperature variation. Where large changes in temperature do occur, altitude is usually the main modulating factor. But shade can give the farmer the ability to ‘micro-adjust’ the climate. The Reunion Island study confirmed that temperature during seed development has a major effect on the flavour of roasted coffee. The sensory trials found multiple correlations between coffee quality and lower temperatures. Coffees produced in regions with a cool climate (more elevated) are more acidic, have a better aroma quality and display fewer flavor defects than those produced in warmer regions (less elevated). Conversely, coffees grown under the hottest temperature conditions have lower acidity, lower aromatic quality, as well as the presence of green and earthy off-flavors … Aroma quality, acidity, fruitiness and overall quality were favored by cool climates, whilst the undesirable earthy and green tastes were increasingly present as the temperature increased. It therefore appears that the quality was weakest under warm climates.

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