Abstract

Techale B, Musema A and Kasahun M

Despite the favorable climatic condition and long history of coffee production in Gomma Woreda, quality of coffee is declining due to poor pre and post harvest practices. Therefore; a study was conducted to assess the prevalence of some pre-identified coffee quality problems in the Woreda in 2013. For quantitative analysis respondents were drawn and data were collected from 150 households. The result indicated that majority of the respondents were headed by males (83%) with large family size (73%). In addition to that, most of the respondents (83.33%) owned old coffee trees (>20 years). The analysis on the pruning practice, harvesting stage, coffee storage method also showed that 93.3% of the respondents practice pruning and 100% of the respondents harvest coffee at full maturity stage but 80% of the respondents mix differently harvested coffee during storage and selling. From this finding we can conclude that institutional factors like age and educational status are found to be the major problems whereas, family size and household head has average effects on coffee quality. Moreover; pre and post harvest practices like age of coffee, disease and weed, compost application and mixing differently harvested coffee had significant effect on quality of coffee in the study area.