Estudo da composição química, atividade antioxidante e potencial odorífico de um café conillon, em diferentes graus de torrefação e análise comparativa com café arábica

Abstract

The coffee is one of the main agricultural products that move the agribusiness in Brazil. The 2004/2005 production revealed that Brazil was responsible for 38.630 million processed bags, being 30.461 million bags of the arabic coffee and 7.803 million bags of the conillon coffee. The production and commercialization of coffee occupies about 20 million people in the world and it involves great disputes for the current and future markets. The importance and presence in the daily of most of the people, it is waited that the drink of coffee has quality, aroma and pleasant flavor. This work presents the study of the chemical composition, antioxidant activity and potential odorific of a coffee (Coffea canephora) conillon variety 2003/2004, produced in south Espírito Santo State and a comparative analysis with (Coffea arabic) arabic variety of the cerrado Minas Gerais State. The sample of coffee was roasted in three diferent degrees of roasted: light, average and strong, and in a house mill. The antioxidant activity and total phenols demonstrated that conillon coffee beans lightly toasted presents superior values than the others, and it also presents ligher values than those in arabic coffee. The analyses of the powerfull odorants presents in roasted coffee beans, identified by GC/MS showed that conillon coffee weak roasts has the largest odorific activity, justified basically for the ligher concentration of ß-damascenone. The conillon coffee presented odorific activity higher than arabic coffee. The analyses by HPLC showed that the lightly roasts conillon coffee presented more trigoneline and chlorogenic acid than other roasts. The caffeine concentration didn't present significant differences between ther roasts. The arabic coffee have higher trigoneline concentration and the conillon coffee higher caffeine and chlorogenic acid content. Those results indicate that the best drinking of coffee would be a blend of lightly roasted arabic with conillon coffee. The conillon coffee show higher antioxidant activity and the arabic coffee have more pleasant flavor.