Important steps to ensure coffee harvest and post-harvest quality

Coffee harvesting must begin when the plants have 80% to 90% of their fruits mature and, in general, color at the cherry stage. However, depending on the characteristics of the cultivar, if the plant is from an early or late cycle, the color of the fruits may be yellow or red. In addition to the influence of the cultivar, whether of the Arabica or canephora species (robusta or conilon), the ripening time of coffee fruits is also influenced by the temperature (lower or higher), the exposure of the land (little or more sun ), by the planting system (open or dense), and also by the occurrence of rain, especially during flowering in the agricultural year.

Thus, high soil humidity, as a result of persistent rain or irrigation at the end of the granation phase and beginning of maturation, also leads to a delay in the maturation process of coffee fruits. Due to these factors, the harvest can be carried out between March/April and September and, in some cases, extending until November/December, with the months of June to August being the period in which most of the harvest takes place. of coffee in Brazil. Once the harvest has begun, the coffee grower must be careful to strip all the fruits from the plants, if possible by handing over, without breaking branches and tearing off leaves, as such damage could cause stress to the plants and, consequently, make them susceptible to attack by pests and incidence of diseases, thus compromising future harvests.

Once harvested, the coffee must be transported from the farm to the property where it will undergo preparation and processing of the fruits and drying of the beans. Initially, during the fruit preparation and processing phase, newly harvested coffee must be cleaned (shaken) to remove impurities and foreign matter, such as leaves, branches, earth, sticks and stones. Then, it is recommended that, on the same day, the coffee is subjected to the washing and separation process, to remove remaining impurities and, therefore, the coffee fruits should be separated into two groups: cherry and green fruits; and fruits called “boia”, which are in the ripe and dry stages and/or have been damaged.

Continuing this process, during washing and separating the fruits, operations that characterize dry or wet processing may be adopted. In the case of the dry method, the fruits - separated into batches - must be sent directly to the drying phase, in which they are dried completely and give rise to coconut or natural coffees. In this processing route, the investment required is lower than in wet processing. However, if wet processing is adopted, batches of cherry fruits (predominantly) undergo pulping, fermentation and mucilage removal operations and are subsequently sent to the drying phase.

Next, processed coffees, whether dry or wet, need to go through the drying stage, which consists of removing part of the water until they reach a moisture content of 10,5% to 11,5%, to that the grains have adequate conditions for processing, storage and marketing. However, the recommended drying method may be different depending on the climatic conditions of the region, as long as fermentation is avoided at this stage and the coffee is not subjected to high temperatures for a long time, with caution above 40ºC.

Additionally, it is worth highlighting that more details and technical description of the procedures, now the subject of these recommendations on good practices for harvesting, preparing, processing and drying coffee, can be found in the Coffee Manual: Harvest and Preparation, from the Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Company of the State of Minas Gerais - Emater-MG and also in the book Minimum infrastructure for quality coffee production: option for Family Coffee Farming, from the Federal University of Viçosa - UFV. These technical publications were produced by institutions of the Coffee Research Consortium coordinated by Embrapa Coffee and are available in full on Coffee Observatory.

Finally, it is worth adding that the adoption of these good harvest and post-harvest practices, described in general, contributes to reducing the occurrence of intrinsic and extrinsic coffee defects, as referred to in the Normative Instruction of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply – Map - IN 8, which deals with the “Technical Identity and Quality Regulation for the Classification of Raw Processed Coffee”. Furthermore, such practices are also in line with the recommendations contained in the IN 49, from Mapa, which deals with “Good Agricultural Practices and Property Management: Specific Technical Standards for Integrated Coffee Production”, which are worth being known by producers and other segments of national coffee farming.

Coffee Observatory – Developed by Embrapa Café, from 2013, in the context of Embrapa's Agropensa, its main objectives are to collect, analyze and disseminate, in a systematic way, statistical data, information on production and consumption trends, market opportunities and threats and identify possible trajectories of the innovation process.