The Origin Chocolate Event takes place in seven halls of the beautiful Royal Tropical Institute. You can experience, taste and learn about all...
The Origin Chocolate Event takes place in seven halls of the beautiful Royal Tropical Institute. You can experience, taste and learn about all...
The new organization will create a single agriculture sustainability standard, it will simplify the certification process and continue to improve...
On 22-25 May 2016 the 3rd World Cocoa Conference took place in The Dominican Republic. Over 1300 participants from 64 countries attended the...
An International Cocoa Research Network and Conference
Meeting notes, Bavaro Dominican Republic, 26 May 2016
Introduction
The...
Amsterdam, 29 april 2016
Vandebron laat iedereen zelf 100% duurzame energie kopen van onafhankelijke producenten, zoals boeren met een...
The department of Food Science and Technology of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partnership with the Cocoa Processing...
CHOCOLATE’S AROMA PROFILE GIVES AWAY ITS ORIGIN
• Pattern of volatile substances traceable to region
• Method usable in fraud...
Strengthening position of farmers in cocoa value chain
The DFFS provides an alternative interface for interactions between farmers,...
Join us at CMT’s 2nd Cocoa Revolution in Ho Chi Minh, 9-11 March 2016 for the honored address by Laurent Pipitone, Director of the Economics and...
Can you imagine a world without chocolate? No? But will it always be available and what are the challenges the makers face today? And did you know...
CHOCOLATE’S AROMA PROFILE GIVES AWAY ITS ORIGIN
• Pattern of volatile substances traceable to region
• Method usable in fraud investigations
The pattern of volatile substances in chocolate reveals information about the species of cocoa bean used and the beans’ geographical origin. This ‘analytical fi ngerprint’ could be
used in future to identify fraud cases. Rikilt PhD researcher Valentina Acierno and her colleagues published these results in Food Research International.
Acierno analysed 90 different kinds of dark chocolate available in Dutch shops. The chocolate bars were from eight different brands, and the bean species varied – criollo,
forastero or trinitario – as did their origins. The researcher ground up the chocolate bars, put them into airtight jars, waited a while and then put air from the jars through the mass spectrometer. For each type of chocolate this produced a pattern of 136 peaks, with each peak representing a certain aromatic substance. Acierno then used statistical techniques to expose differences and similarities in the enormous quantity of mass spectrometer data
she had obtained. This enabled her to trace the aroma pattern of the chocolate to its botanical and geographical origins. According to professor of Food Authenticity Saskia van Ruth, one of the co-authors of the publication, this is a promising approach for future
authenticity research. Price differentiation based on bean species or origins can make fraud with chocolate tempting. ‘The criollo is the king of the cocoa beans and fetches a higher price. And its geographical origin is seen as carrying added value too.’ Currently however,
there is no validated process ready for regulatory organizations such as the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority. Van Ruth: ‘If you want to use this as a law enforcement method you must first expand your database because it has to be able to stand up in
court.