Diagnòstico del agua utilizada en las procesadoras de café del municipio Caripe - Estado Monagas, Venezuela

Abstract

Latin America is the region with the highest coffee production in the world, and Monagas is one of the producing states in the area of the Caripe Municipality, Venezuela, which is supplied with a hydrographic basin, being the Caripe River its main water resource. The purpose of this study was to conduct a preliminary assessment to the quality of water used during the wet coffee processing in the few processors thet still operating in the Caripe Municipality. It was considered specifically those located in “Agropecuaria Cantarrana”, “Gualberto”, “Cocollar”, “Lisieux”, and “Las Acacias” farms, in order to determine whether the evaluated parameters meet the allowed values for the current Venezuelan Legislation. Based on the results obtained, in general it was observed that all parameters evaluated comply with the permitted limits in terms of quality, except for microbiological analysis related to the levels of total coliforms fulfilled only for "Cantarrana" processor. While other producers fail to comply with this quality parameter, being quite evident in the case of the "Cocollar" processor whose water had the highest levels for these pathogens (240 for the Most Probable Number/100 mL index), which are indicative of microbiological contamination.

Keywords

• Water resource
• water quality
• coffee processors
• Caripe Municipality