ASIC Serves Coffee Science

PORTLAND, OREGON

By Dan Shryock

When consumers drink coffee, they likely give no thought to the science behind their beverages. For the nearly 300 people attending in the 27th annual Association for Science and Information on Coffee Conference, research moved to the forefront.

The biennial conference, held Sept. 17-20 in Portland, Ore., featured four full days of scientific studies as researchers presented findings on subjects ranging from soil impacts on coffee tree growth to caffeine effects on consumers based on individual genetic differences. In all, 68 speakers succinctly delivered short overviews reflecting years to scientific study.

The Association for Science and Information on Coffee (ASIC) is an independent, non-profit organization that shares scientific insights about the coffee tree, the bean, the beverage and its impacts on individuals and communities. The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) collaborated on the Portland event.

“The SCA has been working on an initiative the past couple years to drive more academic coffee research,” said Peter Giuliano, SCA’s Chief Research Officer and conference host. “As an industry player, we want to base our education and our standards on real research.  That requires engaging with academic scientists studying coffee all over the world and ASIC is an organization that has been doing that for 50 years.”

Added to this year’s conference was an Industry Day, a dedicated day created to extend the knowledge base outside the international scientific community, Giuliano said.

“The mission for ASIC always is to provide a venue for exchanging coffee information and science but this year we specifically wanted to expand that mission to include industry,” he said. “We really wanted to open this up to participants from the industry who may be interested in science or who want to integrate science into their business. We designed a lot of this conference to try to help make these connections.”

The expectation was that industry attendees would arrive for one day only, but Giuliano was surprised to see them choose to attend all four days. “This is a small group of highly interested and focused coffee people,” he said. “We had a large group of industry people register for the entire conference. It shows there’s a lot of interest on both sides.”

One hall within the Oregon Conference Center was set aside for poster displays, a regular feature of each ASIC conference. Arranged around the illycaffè espresso station were 100 posters submitted by researchers around the world. Some posters were provided by on-stage presenters while others were in-progress research reports from other scientists.

Giuliano said more than 200 researchers responded to a call for abstract submissions. Every submission then was evaluated by an ASIC review committee based on research quality and unique approaches. Final decisions on who would present and what posters would be displayed were made by the ASIC board.

“The goal is to get as much research exchange as possible,” he said. “ASIC and some sponsors even provided money to help fund travel for some (contributors). It’s important to be as inclusive as possible.”

Attendees, representing 34 countries, received a steady flow of research data on topics ranging from the biochemistry and biotechnology of green coffee to plant pathology. Other topic groups included consumption and health; sustainability, climate changes and labels; farm management, roasted coffee technology and processing; coffee chemistry and sensory sciences; genetics and breeding; science of quality; and plant science.

The conference in recent years has increased its focus on quality in order to keep pace with the growth of specialty coffee, Giuliano said.

“People come here to get the latest updates on the state of the science. They want to get the specific update for their own discipline and a general landscape for the rest of the disciplines,” he said. “They also get to interact with people outside their disciplines. They’re all coffee people.”