Water toxicity evaluation in terms of bioassay with an Electronic Tongue

Abstract

A lot of various applications of the Electronic Tongue (ET) related to the detection and quantification of taste and flavour of different products were reported so far. For obvious reasons, one relies upon human perception and taste panel marks working with ET in this domain. However, there is an unusual, albeit wide, realm of perception-related analysis based on the “marks” produced by other biological species, besides human beings, from different mammals to microorganisms. Thus, a series of methodologies, which are based on an ample variety of species (e.g. Daphnia, algae, unicellular organisms, luminescent bacteria and many others) were applied for the evaluation and monitoring of water quality and detection of acute water toxicity. The present paper deals with the application of the potentiometric multisensor system for water toxicity estimation in terms of the bioassay with three living test organisms: Daphnia magna, Chlorella vulgaris and Paramecium caudatum. The prediction of water toxicity with relative errors 15–26% (depending on the test object) is possible using PLS (projection on latent structures) regression from the data obtained by potentiometric multisensor system.