Discrimination of edible fungi varieties and evaluation of their umami intensities by using an electronic tongue method

Abstract

SummaryThe flavour and taste of edible fungi are highly associated with the presence of several umami substances. In this study, the different edible fungi are discriminated by an electronic tongue method. The response data are analysed by the PCA (principal component analysis), DFA (discriminant factor analysis) and PLS (partial least square) method. The results show that the two data analysis methods (PCA and DFA) could successfully distinguish the variety of edible fungi. Moreover, the umami intensities of the edible fungi solutions are evaluated and compared by an electronic tongue analysis with calibration by the responses of different monosodium glutamate (MSG) concentrations. The signals are also used to build up PLS models to estimate and predict the umami intensities of the edible fungi. The results of this study indicate that the electronic tongue has a great potential in qualitative and quantitative analysis of the sensory quality of edible fungi.