Guima Café, from the BMG Group, won “Best of the best” at the 8th Ernesto Illy International Coffee Awards. The winning lot is from the MGS Paraíso 2 cultivar, developed by the Coffee Genetic Improvement Program of the Agricultural Research Company of Minas Gerais (Epamig). The announcement was made in November, at an event held at the New York Public Library, in New York.
Guimá Café is produced between the municipalities of Varjão de Minas and Patos de Minas, in Cerrado Mineiro, on a property acquired by the BMG Group in 1977, with a specific focus on coffee growing and which, since 2008, has invested in sustainability and the production of special drinks . “The property’s vision today is all about sustainable production. A part of the area is certified as regenerative agriculture and our conventional practice is entirely focused on sustainable management, aiming to reduce the use of pesticides, the correct use of fertilizers (adoption of organic and organomineral fertilizers), in addition to reuse and correct destination of waste (coffee straw, washer wastewater, all of this returns to the crop in the form of fertilizer)”, explains agricultural technician, Ricardo Oliveira, responsible for agronomic practices.
The search for certification and the adoption of more appropriate management practices led the team to begin the search for new genetic materials that were more resistant and that, at the same time, resulted in a high quality drink. “Until 2008, Catuaí 144 and Mundo Novo predominated. From the achievement of certifications such as Rainforest, came investment in the production of specialty coffees and the renewal of crops with genetic materials aimed at productivity and quality (yellow and red Bourbon, Icatu and Catuaís, which stand out due to the characteristics of the region). In addition to the adoption of post-harvest processing methods that enable the improvement of several batches of our coffee”, details Ricardo Oliveira.
It was this search for more productive and quality genetic materials that led the group to acquire the first seedlings of the MGS Paraíso 2 cultivar. “Our story with MGS Paraíso 2 began in 2018, our director at the time spoke with Marco Antônio de Castro, our classifier in Patrocínio, and asked about the cultivar that was scoring best in the region and achieving the best placements. He pointed us to Paraíso and she gave us this guidance”, remembers Ricardo Oliveira.
From then on, Ricardo and the team sought more information and discovered two Epamig cultivars, Paraíso MG H419-1 and MGS Paraíso 2. “We went for a few days in the field in the region to get to know the crops and the decision was made in a presentation in Patrocínio made by researcher Gladyston Carvalho, from Epamig, when I asked the question about which of the Paraíso cultivars was most adapted to the Cerrado Mineiro. The answer was categorical: MGS Paraíso 2. From there I already informed our manager to speed up the search for seedlings in nearby nurseries”, he says.
The planting was done to renew an area where Catuaí Vermelho IAC 144 had been cultivated and the results were quickly visible. “This coffee has adapted very well in our areas, combining requirements for resistance to pests and diseases, productivity and quality. And he surprised even more with this Illy Caffè award, winning first place in the Cerrado Mineiro, National and International regional competitions, competing with the three national champions from nine countries”, adds the coach.
The evaluation was carried out by an independent panel made up of nine experts who examined, in a blind tasting, the best lots from the 2022-2023 harvest. Beforehand, each batch of coffee was analyzed by illycaffè's quality control laboratories and classified in terms of aromatic richness and complexity, elegance and balance of its flavor and intensity of its aroma.
“We are the first Brazilian café to win first place in this international competition that has great credibility, which is very gratifying! This award is also a tribute to our patriarch, Dr. Flávio, who left us in January, and this great team involved, the work of many people, many families”, highlights Ricardo Oliveira, who adds: “Café Illy acquires the pulped cherry, without any post-harvest processing, induction , or fermentation. Which proves that the region, the soil, the altitude between 1000 and 1030m, the management and the cultivar, combined perfectly”, he concludes.
Launched in 2012, the MGS Paraíso 2 cultivar has stood out for presenting high productivity and high potential for the production of specialty coffees. Derived from the cross between Catuaí Amarelo IAC 30 and Híbrido de Timor UFV 445-46, it is characterized by its low size, yellow fruits, high vegetative vigor, resistance to rust, precocity of fruit maturation, wide adaptation to irrigated cultivation systems and dryland and excellent adaptability to manual and mechanized harvesting systems.
The cultivar is one of 21 developed by Epamig's Genetic Improvement Program, which has selected materials capable of meeting the demands of current coffee farming, mainly with regard to productivity, resistance to pests and diseases and final quality of the drink.
A large project has been conducted in different producing regions of Minas Gerais to evaluate the performance of cultivars. The model, which has already been applied in the Cerrado Mineiro and Southern Minas regions, compares new cultivars using reference cultivars in productivity and drink quality as controls.
Researcher Gladyston Carvalho highlights that the good performance of a cultivar depends on several factors. “In the same region we can find different conditions of altitude, relief, soil type, production system, temperature and more, which affect the final performance of the cultivar. These projects allow us to better understand the behavior of cultivars in each region to generate more precise cultivation indications for coffee growing in Minas Gerais.”
The results of the projects in Cerrado Mineiro and Southern Minas were published in 2023 and confirmed the versatility and performance of Cultivar MGS Paraíso 2. “In the Cerrado project, in partnership with the Federation of Coffee Growers, this was the cultivar that achieved highest average productivity and quality of the drink in the sum of the 22 participating properties in the first four harvests”, points out Epamig researcher, Vinícius Andrade. “In the south of Minas, MGS Paraíso 2 was among the top three in productivity in five of the ten municipalities evaluated and obtained the highest scores in the sensory analysis, in the project carried out together with Cooxupé”, adds Epamig researcher, César Botelho.
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