18F-19

V. SCHMITT¹, S. Isz², G. Carayon², and G. Foster, Sr.³. (1) Alpha M.O.S America, 33 North River St., Hillsborough, NJ 08844, (2) Alpha M.O.S., 20 Avenue Didier daurat, Toulouse, 31400, France, (3) ALPHA MOS, ALPHA MOS America, 7502 Connelley Drive, Suite 110, Hanover, ND 21076

In order to gain new consumers, food companies continuously propose new, attractive, and pleasant-tasting beverages. Taste attributes of tea range across a wide spectrum of flavors, bitterness, or smoothness. These taste parameters are linked to tea origin, type, process, and steeping time. The importance of proper labeling related to the tea origin and process technique is needed to define the quality of the final product. The aim is to assess the ASTREE Electronic Tongue performances to differentiate teas according to their flavors and origins, and to analyze the impact of various manufacturing processes and steeping time. The ASTREE Electronic Tongue mimics the general human gustatory principle. ASTREE is a 7-electrochemical sensors array-based instrument. Sensors are partially cross-selective, allowing global analysis using a potentiometric detection method. Results are processed with multivariate statistics to obtain a fingerprint of a complex chemical mixture. Five flavored teas, five origins, and three various manufacturing processes have been studied. The teas are all brewed in hot water for three different durations. The same water brand has been used for all the samples, and the teas were cooled down before the analysis. The ASTREE Electronic Tongue is able to distinguish teas according to: (1) their flavors: blackberry, peach, lemon, vanilla, and mint; (2) their origins: Yunnan (China), Sencha (Japanese), Wu Long (Taiwan), Ceylan (Sri Lanka); and (3) their manufacturing processes: black, oolong, and green tea. The ASTREE Electronic Tongue provides the evaluation of influence of steeping time influence according to these three selected parameters. With these results, we illustrate that the ASTREE Analyzer is a fast and reliable analytical tool which can be used to verify tea origin and to study parameters of manufacturing processes or steeping times on the global taste of the teas drinked by consumer.

Session 18F, Product Development: General
2:00 PM - 5:30 PM, Sunday PM Room Hall I-2

2005 IFT Annual Meeting, July 15-20 - New Orleans, Louisiana