Quality range for free amino acids of cacao beans. In: Agrotrópica v. 35 n. 1 p. 5-14, 2023.

Abstract

The cocoa and derivatives industries use pH as a biochemical parameter to verify the samples quality and infer their potential for flavour and aroma, without resorting to complex analytical methods. For this reason, we sought to determine a pH range in dry cacao beans (DCB) whose free amino acids (FAAs) response was associated with satisfactory values of the fermentation index (FI). Graphical and statistical techniques were used to project classifying elliptical clustering of FI values onto scatterplots. The overall pH range of 5.79 to 6.05 predicts FAAs contents of DCB with high fermentative quality. The Tyrosine content range from 930.20 to 1252.05 mg kg-1 fat free dry material was associated with this pH prediction, being a potential indicator of fermentative quality.