Effect of sample presentation protocols on the performance of a margarine expert panel

Abstract

In the field of product development and quality assurance flavour lexicons are widely used. These systems include the definition of all attributes and the relevant reference materials or reference samples. With the application of these lexicons more reliable results can be acquired and it can be very helpful to the assessors in sensory analysis. The main purpose of our further research was to establish a flavour language for table margarines. A well-trained margarine expert panel was already established and also an appropriate sensory method (QDA) was chosen. However, the applied sample presentation design also has a strong influence on the results. In this study the effect of two types of test protocols were compared on the performance of the expert panel. The results of the sensory panel were monitored using univariate (F-plot, MSE-plot, p*MSE-plot) and multivariate statistical methods (Tucker-1 correlation loading plot) by PanelCheck. With application of the side-by-side protocol (SBS) the panel agreement and the ability to discriminate the samples and the repeatability of the panel were considerably improved against using the sequential monadic presentation protocol (SM). The explained variance of the first occasion was 74.8% and in case of the application of SM was 55% for PC1.