PIAN DI SAN BARTOLO, Florence, Italy – Accademia del Caffè Espresso, La Marzocco’s centre dedicated to Italian espresso culture, has launched a research project to study the coffee plant in all its components. The project is in collaborations with Professor Stefano Mancuso and PNAT, an interdisciplinary team born as a spin-off of the University of Florence and ENEA, the national agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic development.
The first months of the research involved the analysis of coffee samples from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala by researchers from PNAT and the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology of the University of Florence and ENEA.
This is the beginning of a path that aims to study in depth the chemical and genetic components of the coffee plant, to describe on a scientific basis the complexity of the product, which represents the world’s second largest commodity.
“The goal of the collaboration is certainly ambitious: through this research we want to demonstrate that it is possible to grow excellent coffee in a good, clean and fair way, to truly create a sustainable model that can then be used for other crops grown on the planet”, Professor Stefano Mancuso says.
The Accademia del Caffè Espresso is a cultural hub of La Marzocco, a company that has always put quality first in the production of its machines and, as Stefano Mancuso observes, “There could be no La Marzocco machines without an excellent coffee at origin.”
This three-year research project is led internally by Accademia agronomist and Coffee Research Leader Massimo Battaglia, alongside Stefano Mancuso – with the involvement of PNAT, Doctor Alessia Fiore and her research team at ENEA, and in collaboration with coffee origin institutions from El Salvador (CSC), Honduras (IHCAFE), Costa Rica (ICAFE) Guatemala (ANACAFE), as well as Aliance for Coffee Excellence and Cup of Excellence.
