Changes of Antioxidant Capacity of Robusta Coffee during Roasting

The in vitro radical scavenging capacity of the roasted and ground coffee is generally known as well as the published results of lowering the incidence of various diseases by regular intake of coffee. The antioxidant capacity of coffee is based mainly on the phenols, but during the roasting phenols are degraded and new products with antioxidant capacity are formed. A major contributor to the antioxidant activity was identified as N-methylpyridinium, which is formed during the roasting by degradation of trigonelline, the degradation is about 50% of trigonelline content and the concentration of N-methylpyridinium in roasted coffee is up to 0.25% on a dry weight basis. These literature data were verified within the processing plant experiment, during the usual roasting procedure of Robusta coffee the following parameters were analysed: humidity, water activity, total antioxidant capacity, total phenols, chlorogenic acid and trigonelline content, and colour (L*, a*, b*). The changes of the evaluated parameters were correlated to each other. During the roasting the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) decreased to about one half of original level in the beginning stages of roasting, another decrease continued during the storage of roasted coffee at about 10% within the year. The degradation of trigonelline, neither the content of chlorogenic acid or total phenols did not correlate with TAC in samples during the roasting and storage.