QUALIFICATION OF ASSESSORS IN FOOD PROFILE ANALYSIS AND OTHER NEW DEVELOPMENTS OF PROFISENS

Abstract

Sensory analysis is a fundamental tool in food quality assurance. Beside consumer tests (that focus on the acceptance of products), trained panels provide much detailed sensory data on the intensity of the most relevant attributes. The analysis of descriptive sensory data is a very complex task of this science. One of the key issues is the reliability of the panel members in making decisions. The research group of BME and BCU has created a specialized software - ProfiSens - for food profile analysis. ProfiSens was applied in research and education, in designing and carrying out profile analyses by different panelists in hundreds of cases. Several times not only the food samples, but also the group of panelists were to be qualified. In our paper we discuss a new method based on geometrical properties of the profile polygon, which offers a fast way for the qualification of the assessors. We also often met the problem of willing to use earlier defined profile analysis scoresheets or even only some of their attributes. The solution for these problems is to create a DataBase, containing all the data of designed scoresheets, and to make possible searching and picking up any wanted attributes from the DB. We discuss our results in this field as well.