Determination of Caffeine Content in Arabica and Robusta Green Coffee of Indian Origin

Abstract

The coffee tree belongs to the Rubiaceae family, genus Coffea. Although more than 80 species of coffee have been identified worldwide, only two are economically important. Coffea Arabica, also known as Arabica coffee, is responsible for about 70 percent of the world coffee market, and Coffea Canephora or Robusta coffee represents the rest. Due to the strong physiological effects of caffeine on human physiology, the caffeine content is a very important quality parameter of processed coffee. Routine analysis of caffeine in the food industry can be facilitated using fast and reliable tests. In this article, we quantitatively determined the caffeine content using the chloroform isolation method and we also performed the qualitative determination of caffeine in green coffee of Indian origin by the UV-VIS spectrophotometric method. Following the analysis of caffeine isolate with chloroform, we obtained a caffeine content of 182 mg / 100 g for the Robusta green coffee sample and 154 mg / 100 g for the Arabica green coffee sample. Thus we can confirm the presence of a higher caffeine content in the Robusta India green coffee sample than in the Arabica India green coffee sample. In the spectrophotometric analysis we used 4 coffee samples obtained by extraction with hot distilled water and by extraction with cold distilled water. The spectral analysis confirms the presence of caffeine in both studied coffee species and agrees with the data in the literature.