Review article

Review on Factors That Affects Coffee Quality in Ethiopia

Abstract

Arabica coffee (Coffee Arabica L.) is an economically important crop, which is contributing the highest of all export revenues in Ethiopia. It is also the major cash crop of the country. Despite the favorable climatic conditions, variety of coffee types and long history of its production, quality of coffee is poor due to traditional poor pre and post-harvest practices. Efforts were made so far in areas of fermentation time, drying depth, time of storage and extension support, training for coffee expertise and coffee farmers on recommended technologies. But there is lack of profound assessment works to identify the specific coffee quality problems and lack of adequate information on the effects of post-harvest processing and handling techniques on coffee quality. Therefore, this review`s objectives are assessing the impact of pre and post-harvest processing practices on the quality of both wet and dry processed coffee, identifying the inherent quality of coffee and investigating socio-economic technical and institutional factors related to coffee quality problems. From coffee farmers those factors that affect coffee quality were disease prevalence in coffee field, compost application, mixing up of differently harvested coffee during selling, availability of storage, drying materials used for drying and age of coffee in the store. Extension intervention could be the best approach to create awareness among coffee producers towards maintaining typical coffee quality profile of their garden through processing that finally adds value to their produces.