COFFEE CULTIVATION GUIDE - Coffee Board of India

The under and over ripe fruits can be converted into cherry coffee. While
harvesting the coffee, picking mats should be used, this helps in easy collection of
fallen fruits and prevents the mould formation. Prevention of mould formation avoids
the production of Ochra Toxin-A in coffee beans. Use of picking mats also reduces
the Coffee Berry Borer infection. One should note that, clean gunny bags or plastic
bags should be used for collecting the fruits during harvesting. These bags have to be
regularly washed with clean water, dried and used for collecting the fruits. Bags used
for storing chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides and fungicides should never
be used for harvesting coffee fruits. No fruits should be allowed to remain in the
plants after the end of season harvest as it can invite berry borer infestation.
3. Coffee Processing
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(a): Preparation of Robusta Parchment coffee
The pulper, pulper tanks, siphon tanks, rakers, washer, fermentation tanks
should be thoroughly cleaned before the pulping operation is undertaken. The
premises of the pulper unit as well as the drying yards should be kept in hygienic way.
The pulper unit should be properly adjusted depending on the fruit size and checked
every day to prevent cuts. Pulper nipped and other deformed beans will yield
defective low quality parchment. All the floats, leaves, twigs should be separated
from the fruits and only ripen fruits should be fed into the pulper using regulated
amount of clean water.
Parchment coffee or plantation coffee can be prepared by pulping, cleanly
washed with water and dried under sun. Preparation of such coffee requires pulping
equipments and adequate supply of clean water. The quality of parchment coffee is
always superior to that of cherry coffee (whole fruit dried under sun). Cherry coffees
always give fruity taste as the beans are in contact with the mucilage for a longer time
during the course of drying period. Therefore, wet processing of coffee is essential to
get superior quality coffee and the method can be followed wherever, all the adequate
facilities like sufficient clean water and good processing machineries are available.
The pulping and washing machineries and other equipments used in the
preparation of parchment coffee should be cleaned on daily basis. No fruits, fruit
skins or beans from the previous day’s harvest should be allowed to remain and mix
with fresh coffee fruits or pulped beans. These materials badly damage the parchment
coffee quality. Only clean water shall be used for processing coffee fruits and all the
extraneous matters such as leaves, twigs and stones should be thoroughly removed
from the fruits before pulping. If adequate supply of water is not available, then the
water used for pulping the fruits can be recycled to pulp the fruits second time. The
pulped water however, should not be used on the second day. Further, pulped water
should never be used for washing the coffee beans under any circumstances.
As far as possible, harvested fruits have to be pulped on the same day of the
harvest. If, it is not possible to process all the fruits on the same day, such fruits can
be stored under clean water and pulped on the second day. The fruits stored for more
than 10 hours in the open heap without pulping will result in fruity cup. The fruit
skins separated by pulping should be taken away from the pulping site as quickly as
possible so that microbial decomposition of the skin does not affect the quality of
parchment coffee.
The sticky mucilage on the pulped beans can be removed by 4 different
methods. However, the commonly followed/adopted methods are two namely: (1)
Natural Fermentation and (ii) : Aqua machine wash by friction.
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