Triage components in coffee.

The production of desired quality beans from the coffee fruit is influenced by various factors. Agronomical, physiological and technological variations influence the quality. Due to the above, the beans inside the fruit are not always uniform in size and shape, etc. The modern processing industry grades beans by colour, air-classification, hand-sorting and garbling, and recently by the use of electronic colour graders. The separations made thereby are graded differently by different countries. The components which cannot be classified as flats or peaberry are generally classified as Triages which do not include blacks, bits and browns. The percentage of various malformed defective beans, beans with smaller sizes, over-sized beans, etc., also varies depending upon various factors. These factors make it difficult to define triages objectively. The International Standards Organization, while drafting the vocabulary of coffee and its products, has defined Triage Residues in coffee as extraneous matters, other impurities and defective beans removed by triage, the definition of which is not clearly detailed. The Indian Coffee Board in their specifications for different grades for coffee mainly based on size of the beans, defined Triages as those which do not have any sieving requirements and also prescribed the permissible percentages of these triages in different varieties of coffee. The Indian Standard Specification for Grading for Green Coffee, IS : 3581-1966, has also described grade designations of green coffee and their requirements along with the definitions for Triages and their permissible percentages of these triages in other grades. These triages include broken, withered, spotted, elephant, small, discoloured, malformed, pales and pulpercuts either in flats or in the peaberries and shall be free from blacks, stinkers and sours. The different aspects of quality evaluation of coffee have been reviewed by us earlier (1). Scientific data on chemical composition as well as the roasting characteristics of the triage components are lacking.