University of Florida School of Natural Resources and Environment, Gainesville, FL, USA.
Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Washington, DC, USA.
J Sci Food Agric. 2024 Jan 15;104(1):488-499. doi: 10.1002/jsfa.12949. Epub 2023 Sep 22.
For a significant subset of agricultural products, including coffee, wine and tea, sensory perceptions of terroir (i.e., characteristic flavors imparted by the growing environment) are tightly linked to the product's value. With increasing climate change, it is critical to understand how shifts in climate, such as changes in precipitation, may interact with management practices (e.g., cultivar selection) to impact sensory quality in terroir-driven crops, and what biochemical compounds may be associated with those impacts. Here, sensory quality and volatile profile composition were assessed for four Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica) cultivars grown in a field experiment where precipitation was reduced by rainout shelters, resulting in 14% lower soil moisture on average.
Our results indicate an overall increase in yield coincident with a moderate decrease in sensory quality in response to reduced precipitation. The presence and magnitude of the sensory quality shift varied by cultivar and sensory attribute, though the Acidity attribute was consistently negatively impacted across cultivars, albeit with a high degree of uncertainty. Additionally, 31 volatile compounds were identified across green coffee samples that were variably impacted by reduced precipitation. Hierarchical clustering analysis identified patterns in volatile clustering associated with sensory attributes suggesting that reduced precipitation effects on sensory attributes may depend on nonlinear combinations of secondary metabolites.
Ultimately, our results advance efforts to improve predictions of climate impacts on coffee-growing landscapes and communities and highlight the value of considering indicators of harvest value beyond yield to improve economic forecasts for agroecosystems under climate change.
对于包括咖啡、葡萄酒和茶叶在内的相当一部分农产品来说，风土（即由生长环境赋予的特征风味）的感官感知与产品的价值紧密相连。随着气候变化的加剧，了解气候变化（如降水变化）如何与管理实践（如品种选择）相互作用，从而影响风土驱动型作物的感官质量，以及哪些生化化合物可能与之相关，这一点至关重要。在这里，我们评估了四个阿拉比卡咖啡（Coffea arabica）品种在田间试验中的感官质量和挥发性成分，该试验中使用了防雨水棚来减少降水，导致平均土壤湿度降低 14%。
我们的结果表明，在响应减少降水的情况下，产量总体上增加，同时感官质量适度下降。感官质量变化的存在和幅度因品种和感官属性而异，尽管酸度属性在所有品种中都受到一致的负面影响，但存在很大的不确定性。此外，在绿咖啡豆样本中鉴定出 31 种挥发性化合物，这些化合物受减少降水的影响程度不同。层次聚类分析确定了与感官属性相关的挥发性聚类模式，表明减少降水对感官属性的影响可能取决于次生代谢物的非线性组合。
最终，我们的研究结果推动了改善对咖啡种植景观和社区气候变化影响预测的努力，并强调了考虑收获价值指标而不仅仅是产量来改善气候变化下农业生态系统经济预测的价值。
