Assessment of Quality Profile and Effect of Drying Materials on Arabica Coffee (Coffea arabica L.) Landrace Collected in Five Selected Woredas of Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.) is an economically important crop, which is contributing the highest of all export revenues in Ethiopia. Despite the favorable climatic conditions, variety of coffee types and long history of its production in Ethiopia, quality of coffee is poor due to lack of adequate information on the effect of pre- and post-harvest practices and handling techniques on coffee quality. Therefore, this study was conducted with the objectives of assessing Quality profile and Effect of drying materials of dry processing of Arabica coffee and to assess the impact of drying materials on the quality of dry processed Arabica coffee and to determine the quality profile of landrace coffee from five selected areas of Northern Ethiopia. For field survey, 300 small-scale farmers were purposefully selected following sample size determination procedures of probability proportional size technique and 50 coffee traders were also purposefully selected from the five selected woredas’ and interviewed from November to December 2012. The data collected from the field survey were analyzed by employing the statistical procedures of SPSS version 16.0. On the other hand a total of 75coffee samples(15from five selected coffee growing woredas of werababoo, Habru, Raya-Azebo, Kolatemben and Tselemti in Northern Ethiopia) were prepared for the laboratory analysis (organoleptic and bean physical quality characteristics) at Ethiopia Commodity Exchange(ECX) of Addis Ababa. The laboratory experiment was arranged in factorial combination with five different drying materials (mesh wire, wooden raised bed , bamboo raised bed, cement floor and soil floor) in RCBD design in three replications and organoleptic quality attributes were assessed by trained coffee panels. The laboratory data analysis was computed by using general linear model (GLM) procedures of SAS version 9.2. As a result from the survey analysis, the demographic information in those areas was productive age ranged from 30-50 years old, 70% Male headed and about 62% of the total respondent was illiterate. And about 28.7% had owned a coffee farm less than 0.25ha while 30% and 18.7% had owned a coffee farm of the area between 0.25-0.5 ha. Whereas in Pre-harvest practices 65.3% of the coffee planted was aged without replacing old plant and no use of compost or manure application on the farm, no intercropping, poor harvesting system, poor mechanism of quality coffee identification, no means of moisture content determination and marketing currently replacing by chat, were some of the most problems for the study areas. And the result of the current experiment showed that the raised bed of mesh wire, Bamboo and wood materials were good drying materials for coffee and relatively the maximum grade was recorded grade 2 from Raya-Azebo, Habru and Werababoo woredas’ bulked coffee (Landraces) respectively, however the least grade was recorded grade 4. And mesh wirehad got high net income, while Raised bed of Bamboo and Wood with sack mat was medium net income than cement and soil floor. The correlation analysis also indicated that almost all were strong positive correlated and highly significant (p<0.01) relationship of the quality attributes, but negative correlated with grade. Therefore Extension intervention could be the best approach to create awareness, Morphological and molecular characterization of the landraces garden coffee growing in those areas is important and an urgent issue, feasibility of semi-washed coffee processing could be tested to further improve the coffee quality and Research geared towards developing or adapting improved coffee varieties from similar agro-ecologies in Ethiopia or other coffee producing countries could be a means to promote better production of coffee in the studied target areas would be make towards maintaining typical coffee quality profile and competence in the international coffee market