Assessment of coffee post-harvest handling in major growing areas of Ari and South Omo zone, South Ethiopia

The study was designed with the objective of assessing a post-harvest handling practices of coffee in Ari and South Omo Zone, South Ethiopia. Totally, 270 purposively selected household respondents were used from three Woredas for data collection. Finally, quantitative data was analyzed by employing SPSS (version 20). The results indicated that majority of the surveyed farmers were harvesting their coffee at full maturity stage (93.3%), use selective hand picking (49.4%) and drying on plastic sheets 45%, which maintain the inherent coffee quality. On the contrary, (30.6%) stripping on ground and collect in bulk, harvesting coffee by polyethylene bag (29.1), drying on bare land (36.5%), packaging in polyethylene bag (70.8%), store in residence home (94.5%), 42.8 % store their coffee more than three months and mold development (49.1%), which is considered as coffee quality deteriorating factor. So that, providing adequate trainings on a continuous basis to producers on pre-and post-harvest management practices are vital. These will further increase the quality; thereby increase the price because good quality coffee gets good grades that earn high price. Therefore, extension intervention could be the best possible approach to enhance awareness among coffee producers to keep the typical coffee quality profile in the area.