Sensing Basic Tastes by Electronic Tongue Sensors

Abstract

There is an increasing demand to develop method for simulating the human taste perception by objective instruments1. The task was to develop method for the assessment of definite taste attributes. Therefore, our objective was to develop complete method for sensing different taste attributes. The subject of this work was to test the Specific Sensor Array for taste screening developed by Alpha M.O.S. Different brands of carrot juices were analyzed by an Alpha Astree Electronic Tongue (ET) and a trained sensory panel. The results of the sensory evaluation showed that the different carrot juice samples were significantly different from each other in some taste attributes. The electronic tongue was able to distinguish the tested samples according to the measurement results evaluated by multivariate statistics. Furthermore, the relevant taste attributes of carrot juice samples such as sour taste could be predicted by definite sensors of the electronic tongue. Based on our results we concluded that the selected sensors of the Specific Sensor Array could be an appropriate tool for estimating important taste attributes of the tested carrot juice samples.