Coffee

Rizea Silviu – Florin

Grupa 8220 I.M.A.P.A.

Proiect Engleza

• Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted coffee beans, which are the seeds of "berries" from the Coffea plant. Coffee plants are cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in the equatorial regions of the Americas, Southeast Asia, India and Africa. The two most commonly grown are the highly regarded arabica, and the less sophisticated but stronger and more hardy robusta. The latter is resistant to the coffee leaf rust, Hemileia vastatrix, but has a more bitter taste. Once ripe, coffee beans are picked, processed, and dried. Green (unroasted) coffee beans are one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world. Once traded, the beans are roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavor, before being ground and brewed to create coffee.

• Coffee is slightly acidic (pH 5.0–5.1) and can have a stimulating effect on humans because of its caffeine content. Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world. It can be prepared and presented in a variety of ways. The effect of coffee on human health has been a subject of many studies; however, results have varied in terms of coffee's relative benefit. The majority of recent research suggests that moderate coffee consumption is benign or mildly beneficial in healthy adults. However, the diterpenes in coffee may increase the risk of heart disease

• Coffee cultivation first took place in Southern Arabia. The earliest credible evidence of coffee-drinking appears in the middle of the 15th century in the Sufi shrines of Yemen.In the Horn of Africa and Yemen, coffee was used in local religious ceremonies. As these ceremonies conflicted with the beliefs of the Christian church, the Ethiopian Church banned the secular consumption of coffee until the reign of Emperor Menelik II. The beverage was also banned in Ottoman Turkey during the 17th century for political reasons, and was associated with rebellious political activities in Europe.

Etymology• The first reference to coffee in the

English language is in the form chaona, dated to 1598 and understood to be a misprint of chaoua[14] (equivalent, in the orthography of the time, to chaova). This term and "coffee" both derive from the Ottoman Turkish kahve, possibly by way of the Italian caffè. In turn this derives from the Arabic qahwah (قهوة).[15]This is traditionally held to have originally referred to a type of wine, whose etymology is given by Arab lexicographers as deriving from the verb qahā in reference to the drink's reputation as an appetite suppressant. It is sometimes alternatively traced to the Arabic quwwa ("power, energy") or to Kaffa, a medieval kingdom in Ethiopia whence the plant was exported to Arabia. Others with "equally little authority" even hold that the region was named after the drink. The connection to "Kaffa" has been disputed, however. The name qahwah is not used for the berry or plant (the products of the region), which are known in Arabic as bunn and Shoa as būn. Semitic had a root qhh "dark color", which, since "coffee" is dark in color, became a natural designation for the beverage.

• Coffea arabica is predominantly self-pollinating, and as a result the seedlings are generally uniform and vary little from their parents. In contrast, Coffea canephora, and C. liberica are self-incompatible and require outcrossing. This means that useful forms and hybrids must be propagated vegetatively. Cuttings, grafting, and budding are the usual methods of vegetative propagation.On the other hand, there is great scope for experimentation in search of potential new strains.

Biology

Cultivation• The traditional method of

planting coffee is to place 20 seeds in each hole at the beginning of the rainy season. This method loses about 50% of the seeds' potential, as about half fail to sprout. A more effective method of growing coffee, used in Brazil, is to raise seedlings in nurseries that are then planted outside at six to twelve months. Coffee is often intercropped with food crops, such as corn, beans, or rice during the first few years of cultivation as farmers become familiar with its requirements