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Experimental Determination of the Water Footprint (WF) of Colombian Coffee Determinación Experimental de la Huella Hídrica (HH) del Café de Colombia

How to Cite
Rodríguez-Valencia, N. (2020). Experimental Determination of the Water Footprint (WF) of Colombian Coffee. Proceedings of Cenicafe´s Scientific Seminar, 71(1), e71135. https://doi.org/10.38141/10795/71135




Keywords
Huella hídrica

agua virtual

gestión Integral del agua

consumo de agua

contaminación hídrica

medio ambiente

sostenibilidad hídrica

recurso hídrico

cultivo de café

Pegada hídrica

agua virtual

gestão Integral da água

consumo de água

contaminação hídrica

meio ambiente

sustentabilidade hídrica

recurso hídrico

cultivo de café

Water footprint

virtual water

Comprehensive water management

water consumption

water pollution

environment

water sustainability

water resource

coffee cultivation

Sectión
Post-harvest
Nelson Rodríguez-Valencia

Summary

The objective of evaluating the Water Footprint (WF) is to analyze how human activities or specific products are related to water scarcity and pollution, and how activities and products can be more sustainable from the point of view of the use of water. WF is made up of three indicators represented by the colors blue, green and gray; the blue WF and green WF indicators are used to evaluate water consumption, while the gray WF is related to the level of contamination. In this Seminar the methodology used for the experimental determination of the WF of Colombian Coffee is presented, it was carried out in three experimental stations of Cenicafé for a complete cultivation cycle (new sowing - first renewal by trimming), including the germinator stages, seedling nursery, growth, production and coffee process, with a planting density of 10,000 trees / ha. The average water footprint for the production of a coffee chapola was 0.336 L / chapola. The average water footprint for the production of a coffee hill was 19.09 L / hill. The average total WF of Colombian coffee for a complete crop cycle (new planting-renewal) was 4.456,72 L kg-1 green coffee, for green WF was 78.24% (3.486,82 L kg-1 cv), for gray WF was 21.54% (959.84 L kg-1 cv) and for blue WF was 0.23% (10.06 L kg-1 cv). The conclusions show that the higher the yields per unit area, the lower the WF and that one way to carry out an integral management of the water resource during cultivation is to have high planting densities, and, for the case of the coffee process stage, it is to adopt the ecological coffee process and carry out a treatment to the coffee wastewater, ensuring zero discharges to the environment.

Nelson Rodríguez-Valencia, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones de Café

Investigador Científico III, Poscosecha