Effect of Different Edaphic Crop Conditions on the Free Amino Acid Profile of PH-16 Dry Cacao Beans

Free amino acids in cacao beans are important precursors to the aroma and flavor of chocolate. In this research, we used inferential and explanatory statistical techniques to verify the effect of different edaphic crop conditions on the free amino acid profile of PH-16 dry cacao beans. The decreasing order of free amino acids in PH-16 dry cacao beans is leucine, phenylalanine, glutamic acid, alanine, asparagine, tyrosine, gamma-aminobutyric acid, valine, isoleucine, glutamine, lysine, aspartic acid, serine, tryptophan, threonine, glycine. With the exception of lysine, no other free amino acid showed a significant difference between means of different edaphic conditions under the ANOVA F-test. The hydrophobic free amino acids provided the largest contribution to the explained variance with 58.01% of the first dimension of the principal component analysis. Glutamic acid stands out in the second dimension with 13.09%. Due to the stability of the biochemical profile of free amino acids in this clonal variety, it is recommended that cacao producers consider the genotype as the primary source of variation in the quality of cacao beans and ultimately the chocolate to be produced.