Davide Rovelli

The Digital Botanical Gardens Initiative (https://www.dbgi.org/) introduces a global, open-science framework for digitizing plant chemodiversity and related metadata in living botanical collections using high-throughput mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. Datasets generated from nearly 7,500 samples collected across five botanical gardens establish a foundation for scaling this effort across botanical collections worldwide.

Coffee leaves have long been used to prepare tea-like beverages, yet the chemical–sensory characterization of coffee leaf infusions remains limited compared with the extensive literature on coffee beverages. Here, we applied a sensomic framework to profile volatile composition and sensory attributes of Coffea leaf infusions prepared under hot- and cold-brewing conditions. Using HS-SPME–GC–MS, 85 volatile compounds were annotated and associated with odor descriptors. These data were integrated with descriptive sensory profiling from a trained panel, enabling the identification of patterns linking volatile fingerprints to both desirable attributes and sensory defects across brewing modalities. Overall, the study proposes candidate quality markers and provides an evidence base to support process and preparation optimization as coffee leaf infusions approach broader commercialization in the European market, contributing to the valorization of coffee by-products.

Coffee by-products, such as coffee leaves, are components of the coffee plant that remain underexplored. In recent years, driven by efforts from both the public and private sectors to pursue circular economy goals, there has been a resurgence in the interest in coffee leaves for producing new products and diversifying the coffee supply chain. It is well known that coffee waste is a source of bioactive compounds and secondary metabolites, which have various applications in the food and beverage sector for producing functional food ingredients and nutraceuticals. Recently, coffee leaf infusions have been approved as novel food in the European Union, demonstrating the feasibility of marketing coffee leaves. To support their potential applications, it is essential to thoroughly understand the chemical composition and phytochemical profile of the by-product to guide future investigations. Omics techniques can be used to support the valorization process, collecting a large amount of information from a complex matrix allowing the use of coffee by-products as extraction materials for the discovery and recovery of functional compounds. The simultaneous extraction of polar and non-polar fractions and the subsequent application of liquid chromatography coupled with high- or low-resolution mass spectrometry techniques allows the simultaneous identification and quantification of several compounds through a holistic approach. Moreover, through the application of chemometrics on the spectral information, it is possible to highlight the main similarities or differences in the batch that could change according to their origin or the post-harvest process as well as discover new molecules with bioactive properties. The application of omics techniques provides support for the reintegration of coffee by-products back into the production chain, reducing the impact on the environment, providing new business opportunities for farmers and companies.