March 2012 C&CI • Quality Control • 45


Colour sorting machine proves popular with specialty market


Satake Corporation, which develops, manufactures, and markets colour sorting systems that incorporate CCD, UV, RGB, and IR vision technologies, says its Evolution RGB colour sorter, which it first showcased at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s (SCAA) 23rd Annual Exposition in Houston, Texas in April 2011, is proving popular with the specialty coffee market. The Evolution RGB colour sorter works like the human eye, identifying and rejecting colour deviations in coffee beans. The full colour sorting machine uses 16 million colour, high-resolution cameras and long-lasting LED lighting to detect and remove defects.


Douglas Urquia, General Manager at Beneficio Santa Rosa, says the Evolution RGB has helped to enhance the quality of the coffee it supplies


The Evolution RGB sees in true colour, and can precisely sort a wide range of products, even those with small shade dif- ferences. Like the human eye, the Evolution RGB detects colour in three wavelengths (red, green, and blue). One of the first customers for the Evolution RGB, Beneficio Santa Rosa in Honduras, says using the machine has helped it to further enhance the efficiency of its sorting process. Douglas Urquia, General Manager at Beneficio Santa Rosa, told C&CI: "In our field of specialty coffees, colour selection is a very important factor. The vision sorters Satake has developed have helped this process with their high precision colour sort, truly extracting the coffee that does not specifically indicate a bean of quality, thereby providing higher efficiency in our processing." A Satake spokesperson said the company believes that for Arabica coffee, where very subtle colour variations need to be detected, the newly-developed full colour RGB technology will have distinct advantages over existing sorters using bichromatic or trichromatic technology.


The Evolution product range includes two models with capacities ranging from 7 tonnes to 14 tonnes per hour.


GAPs transform quality of cocoa


Nestlé reports that, since adopting good agricultural practices (GAPs) under its Cocoa Plan, a co-operative in Côte d’Ivoire has "transformed" the overall quality of its cocoa.


Located in the village of Buyo in the northwest region of Côte d’Ivoire, Coopérative Agricole Benianye de Buyo (CABB) is now producing what Nestlé describes as "the highest quality cocoa beans."


Cocaf Ivoire - Noble, one of Nestlé’s Cocoa Plan supply chain partners, has been working with the co-operative and its 500 farmers to improve their farming prac- tices in order to produce cocoa grown under the standards of UTZ CERTIFIED. "The Nestlé Cocoa Plan has had a pro- found impact on the co-operative," said the company. "Farmers have learnt new skills and techniques to harvest and fer- ment their beans and they now receive a premium for each bag of cocoa delivered. The co-operative now prides itself on only producing the highest quality cocoa beans; it no longer sells any standard cocoa."


OchraTest can detect OTA in minutes


Vicam in the US says its OchraTest, a quantitative method for the detection of ochratoxin A (OTA) in a variety of commodities, including coffee, can detect the presence of OTA in less than 15 minutes (excluding sample preparation).


Ochratoxin A is produced by species of two genera of fungi, Aspergillus and Penicillium that grow naturally on coffee and cocoa. In coffee, the most important OTA-producers are Aspergillus ochraceus, A carbonarius and strains of A niger. OTA is so dangerous that FAO/WHO experts have set a maximum tolerable limit for humans of 100 billionths of a gram per kilogram of body weight per week. In 2004, the EU set maximum permissible limits for OTA of 5 ppb in roasted and ground coffee, and 10 ppb in instant coffee. "OchraTest is safe and simple and its use requires no special skills. The testing tech- nique is unaffected by heat or humidity, and can be performed virtually anywhere," says the company, which notes that the test kit was found to meet or exceed all design and test performance criteria as defined in "Design Criteria and Test Performance Specifications for Quantitative Ochratoxin A Test Kits." OchraTest is one of a number of OTA testing equipments from Vicam. Others include


OchraTest WB, and AflaOchra HPLC, which the company claims is the only test that employs a single column to produce precise numerical results for both Ochratoxin A and the Aflatoxins B1, B2, G1 and G2. AflaOchra HPLC is also designed to be safe and simple, and can be performed in less than 30 minutes (excluding sample preparations and extrac- tion) and requires only basic HPLC skills. Like the Ochratest, it is unaffected by heat or humidity, and can be performed virtually anywhere.


Also available from Vicam is AOZ HPLC, a quantitative method for the simultaneous detection of aflatoxin, ochratoxin A and zearalenone in several commodities, and Myco6in1, which offers simultaneous determination of more species of the strictly regulat- ed mycotoxins including aflatoxins, ochratoxin A, fumonisins, deoxynivalenol, zearalenone, T-2 and HT-2 toxins.


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