Identificação e quantificação de acrilamida em grãos de café torrado e moído por análise cromatográfica

Abstract

Coffee is one of the most consumed products in the world, its bean is produced from the fruit of the coffee tree that, going through industrial processes, can manufacture various types of drinks with pleasant aromas and flavors. In the chemical composition of the grain, glycides, proteins, lipids and minerals are found, in which, like any natural product, there may be some changes in its chemical composition depending on the processing and storage that were submitted. Acrylamide is a solid, odorless, water-soluble monomer, this substance began to draw attention in 2002 for presenting carcinogenic characteristics, its formation occurs during the Maillard reaction in foods rich in amino acids and carbohydrates that have undergone processes using high temperatures. The discovery motivated numerous international studies on the formation and occurrence of the substance, as well as the development of measures to reduce its levels. Thus, this work aimed to identify and quantify acrylamide in samples of the two main coffee species commercialized in the country: Coffea arábica and Coffea canephora, applying different degrees of roasting with monitoring of time: 2, 4, 6 and 8 minutes after reaching 200ºC The results found for acrylamide using GC-MS were 179.99 ppb to 893.39 ppb for arabica coffee and 144.91 ppb to 445.40 ppb for conilon coffee. As for acrylamide concentrations using UPLC-MS/MS, they were from 100.33 ppb to 144.97 ppb for arabica coffee and from 100.33 ppb to 246.00 ppb for conilon coffee. Color analysis results were also obtained with higher results found in conilon coffee treatments and carbohydrates with higher values found in arabica coffee treatments. Due to the large amount of data and in order to better understand the variances between the data, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied. Analyzing the parameter scores, arabica coffee presented higher levels of glucose and fructose, while the roasting treatment applied to conilon coffee generated higher acrylamide content during the Maillard reaction and higher L* a and b color values.