Synthetic Microbial Community: Development, Application and Assessment of Impacts on Fermentation and Coffee Quality

• Grant number: 21/12780-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2023
• End date: February 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Agricultural Engineering - Process Engineering of Agricultural Products
• Principal Investigator: Anderson de Souza Sant'Ana
• Grantee: Carla Alves Barbosa
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Engenharia de Alimentos (FEA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/12461-4 - Development of synthetic microbial communities for coffee fermentation using a hightroughput approach, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

Coffee is widely produced in Brazil and contributes to the economy of the country, due to this importance its cultivation is quite widespread. The coffee can go through three types of processing after the harvest, being they moist, dry and semi-dry. In wet processing, the coffee is fermented in tanks with water after pulping. This fermentation aims to remove the mucilage of the coffee beans, being beneficial when well performed, because an uncontrolled fermentation can negatively impact the quality of the coffee. Thus, studies have been developed to improve the fermentation process of coffee, many of which use individual, mixed starting cultures (two or more species) and even microbial consortia (microbial community composed of several species and based on ecological selection), aiming at the optimization of the removal of mucilage of grains, reduction of time, control of fermentation and improvement of the quality of the obtained coffee. However, these forms of inoculation have limitations, such as the difficulty of finding a single strain with all the characteristics for efficient fermentation, and the difficulty of study by complexity when two or more microorganisms are inoculated. An alternative is the use of synthetic microbial communities (SynComs), which are co-cultures of microorganisms designed to improve function and productivity, and present the advantage of being able to act as a model system to evaluate the role of the main ecological, structural and functional characteristics of a community with greater control. However, to the best knowledge of the authors there are no studies in the literature whose objective has been the development and application of SynCom to improve the coffee process and quality. The use of SynCom in food fermentation processes is recent, with two studies published in 2019 (reproduction of Chinese liquor flavor metabolism) and in 2020 (fermentation of bean paste with reduced salt content). Thus, the present study is unprecedented and aims to develop, apply and evaluate the impacts of the synthetic microbial community on the fermentation and quality of coffee. In the present study, four (n=4) SynComs will be developed from microorganisms isolated from the humid fermentation of coffee and these will be tested in vitro. Later, only one SynCom will be tested in loco (coffee producing farm). It is expected to reduce the time of on-site fermentation and also the purchase of a coffee with better sensory characteristics.