The United States, China, France, England, Japan, Italy, Germany and Israel are some of the 30 countries that will participate in the International Conference on Coffee Science to be held in the city of Campinas, in the interior of the southeastern Brazilian state of São Paulo, between the 14 and 19 of September.
The objective behind the meeting is to discuss the most recent advances in coffee research. This year's edition should include two central themes: coffee and health as well as consumption tendencies and coffee science.
But other matters should be covered, including agronomy, chemistry, biotechnology, processing and coffee improvement. Research made in different countries in each of these areas should be presented.
The Asic conference is organized by the Association for Science and Information on Coffee. In this year's edition there should be 371 presentations about coffee, organized by researchers and scientists. The event is going to take place in Brazil under the aegis of the Campinas Agronomic Institute (IAC).
A total of 700 people are expected at the conference. They should not only be representatives of producer countries, as is the case with Brazil, but also of nations that consume the product.
"There should be farmers, researchers, technicians and professionals turned to production, industrialization and consumption of coffee. Indeed, they should be representatives of all areas of the coffee productive chain, from growing the plant to making coffee cups, coming to Brazil from all corners of the world and, thus, confirming the importance of the country to the international coffee scenery both as a producer and exporter, and being the second main consumer market," stated the president of the organizing committee, Aldir Alves Teixeira.
Asic takes place every two years in a producer country and then in a consumer country. In Campinas, the meeting is going to take place at the Country House of the Royal Palm Plaza Hotel. The ASIC president, Andrea Illy, believes that the Brazilian edition is "gaining special interest due to the Brazilian leadership in the global coffee market and to the extraordinary transformations that have been taking place over the last ten years."
Apart from Brazil, a country from which 250 registrations have already been received, other countries to participate include the United States, China, India, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Costa Rica, Austria, Japan, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Colombia, Canada, Israel, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Finland, Mexico, Ireland, Austria, Uganda, the Republic of the Congo and England.
Anba