TRIESTE – illycaffè presented the results of an important study about monofloral coffee honey in the agricultural and food industry at the 12th “Conference on the Applications of Magnetic Resonance in Food Science” in Cesena, Italy.
AromaLab, one of the in-house analysis and research laboratories at illycaffè, worked with the Chemical Science Department from the University of Padova to analyse monofloral coffee honey for the first time; the honey is a rare and still relatively little-known monofloral variety from the Tolima region in Colombia.
This work enabled the researchers to characterise the sample of monofloral coffee honey and identify the markers, which convey the level of authenticity of this special monofloral variety. The honey is made by bees that frequent almost exclusively coffee flowers, and contains small quantities of caffeine and other substances that are not found in any quantity in ordinary types of honey.
The study stems from a pilot project spearheaded by the Ernesto Illy Foundation – an organisation that has always involved itself in scientific research by setting up and supporting important programmes in partnership with universities, institutions and centres of excellence – and the Colombian coffee producers that aims to promote beekeeping as an additional means of support to coffee growing and production in poorer communities so that they can improve plantation management and also benefit from a secondary and sustainable economy.
It seems that bees actually help to increase the production of quality coffee, and also offer the opportunity to produce a truly exceptional honey and other related products.
At the moment this activity is practically nonexistent but if developed, it could help the people to create an additional source of income as well as an environmentally-friendly economic model which could be applied in all coffee-growing areas.
Source: illycaffè
