‘Coffee, anyone?’DLSU pioneers Coffee Science program

For some, breakfast is not complete without a cup of coffee, but to others, it’s a subject that needs to be carefully studied.

Pushing for the development of the local coffee industry, De La Salle (DLSU), through its La Salle Food and Water Institute, has introduced the country’s first multidisciplinary coffee in collaboration with Gourmet Farms.

Dr. Mel Garcia, a chemistry professor at the DLSU, bared that the elective centers on the chemistry of coffee and involves a multidisciplinary approach to addressing issues, research gaps, and concerns surrounding coffee.

“It is a multidisciplinary elective course that the Chemistry Department of the university offers. As a multidisciplinary course, theoretically, anyone from the undergraduate can enroll in this course,” Garcia told the Daily Tribune.

“Chemistry is the core of this elective, but anyone can enroll, and eventually professors from different academic departments can also teach the subject,” he added.

DLSU and Gourmet Farms signed a memorandum of agreement and deed of donation last 6 January.

The 10-year partnership involves the further development of the pioneering program under the Department of Chemistry for all students in the university.

Garcia shared that the program is a product of years of working and exchanging notes with members of the coffee industry and is aimed at responding to the clamor of these industry actors.

“What we want to happen here is), people understand the core, the essential science and also look at it from the different lens, fields. Because we know that coffee is not just a beverage, it’s something that’s tied or cuts across disciplines, there are political issues in coffee, there are geopolitical, there are cultural, poverty issues, there are economic issues, all of these things,” Garcia explained.

“So we’re hoping that by offering the course, it provides the venue for academics from various disciplines to identify and address gaps and problems and issues in the coffee industry,” he added.

He noted that the program is “not like any of the Coffee 101s,” but rather digs deeper into the bases of both the fundamentals as well as the current state-of-the-art.

“The goal of the elective is to, on the surface of what people see, is that it makes an interesting way of learning chemistry or science in general,” he continued.

“Underneath that, there’s a deeper objective of the people behind so that we members of the academic institutions, students, and faculty members could have a venue, become aware, and understand the nuances in coffee so that they would be able to identity gaps in the coffee industry.”

Helping local farmers through research

How would this elective help local coffee farmers? Garcia said they aim to establish a culture of knowledge generation through facts and data that would fuel policies and introduce reforms.

“ Hopefully when many students and faculty members from different disciplines have been taught, we will be able to generate more research from more disciplines,” Garcia explained.