Among many coffee varieties grown worldwide, a few have been recognized as premium coffees due to their superior features. Of these premium coffees, no coffee is perhaps more expensive than Kopi Luwak. Kopi Luwak, an exotic Indonesian coffee, is made from coffee fruit that has been digested by a cat-like animal known as civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). Despite being known as the world's most expensive coffee, there is no reliable, standardized method for determining its authenticity. Metabolic profiling strategy using a combination of gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and multivariate analysis allows identification of important coffee component (marker) for authentication. Extracts of 21 coffee beans (Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora) were analyzed and subjected to principal component analysis and orthogonal projection to latent structures discriminant analysis. Among the selected markers, citric acid and malic acid were employed for further validation by evaluating their differentiating abilities against various commercial coffee products. The markers demonstrated potential application in the differentiation of authentic Kopi Luwak, imitation coffee, regular coffee, and coffee blend with 50 % Kopi Luwak fraction. This study is the first report to address the selection and successful validation of discriminant markers for the authentication of Kopi Luwak.

Metabolomics approach to select discriminant markers for authentication of Asian palm civet coffee (Kopi Luwak)

248th National Meeting (2014)

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