History

Following two colloquia on coffee, organized in Paris by the Institut Français du Café et du Cacao (IFCC), the Association Scientifique Internationale pour le Café (ASIC) was founded in 1966. Its first Board was composed of:

• Dr. Enesto Illy was its first President
• Dr. P. Navellier the first Scientific Secretary
• Dr. René Coste the first Administrative Secretary of the ASIC.

The ASIC was created to fulfil the unanimously expressed desire of the participants at these meetings to dispose of a permanent organization, which would periodically bring together specialists from all over the world working in the different fields of coffee science and technology, giving them an opportunity of presenting and comparing their investigations.

ASIC came into existence, on the initiative of a few individuals and with the support of the IFCC, in the form of a "non-governmental" association as defined by the French law. The objectives and mode of operation of ASIC are defined in the following articles of the by-laws:

"To establish an inventory of scientific and applied knowledge and to encourage, carry out and coordinate research likely to contribute to a better use of coffee and its derivatives and to the improvement of coffee quality in the mutual interest of producers, wholesalers, industrialists and consumers." (Art. 1)

In September 2006, the General Assembly approved the change of ASIC's name to "Association for the Science and Information on Coffee - Association pour la Science et l'Information sur le Café".

Since its creation, ASIC has organized a series of international scientific conferences in different coffee producing or consuming countries (see Proceedings). Today, ASIC is the only completely independent and non-profit organization in the world whose scientific vocation is specifically devoted to the coffee tree, the coffee bean and the coffee drink.

List of ASIC Conferences