Descriptive analysis training

Descriptive Panel Short Course

Introduction and Purpose:

Sensory analysis is an essential analytical tool for developing or modifying food products, creating and optimizing food production processes, and ensuring consistent product quality. 

A well developed sensory analysis program within your company can save you money and help to ensure expensive product launches are not executed unless the product is ready.

 This course will emphasize descriptive testing and provide the information your students will need to operate a descriptive panel. It is important that we also provide your people with the basics of difference and acceptance testing so these topics will also be covered.

No pre-requisites are required for this course.  Topics that will be covered include:

OVERVIEW of BASIC SENSORY SCIENCE CONCEPTS

Sensory perception fundamentals

• Mechanisms behind sensory perception
• Biases associated with tasting food and beverages

Difference and Acceptance Testing

• Difference
  • Triangle
  • Two-out-of five
  • Duo trio
  • A not-A
  • Difference from control
  • Similarity tests
  • Simple difference test
• Acceptance
  • Qualitative
  • Quantitative

Set-up and Execution for Difference and Acceptance Tests

• Experimental design and objectives
• Location
• Test scales
• Sample preparation
• Data collection
• Data Analysis
• Data Interpretation

Descriptive Testing

• Types of descriptive testing
  • Flavor profile
  • Texture profile
  • Spectrum
• QDA
  • Use
•  Descriptive Panel selection, training, calibration, and maintenance

DAY 2 – PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION to TRAINING and DESCRIPTIVE PANELS

Practical exercise – Descriptive Panel Training

Emphasis can be placed on specific attributes of interest to your company including sweetness, metallic, umami, bitter, astringent, etc.

Section 1:

Training will be performed with reference solutions to ensure that panelists are able to correctly identify single components without the inference of extraneous flavors found in most foods and beverages.

Training in the five basic tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami will be provided, using the references detailed in Table 1.

Training in chemical feeling factors: astringency, heat, and cooling will be provided using references presented in Table 2.

 Table (EXAMPLE)  1: References used to train panelists on the 5 basic tastes

 Table 2: References used to train panelists on the chemical feeling factors

Section 2 :

This section will extend the ability to distinguish the 5 basic tastes and chemical feeling factors explored in Section 1 to foods.

References used in this section are summarized in Table 3.

 Section 3: Training in other attributes of interest to your company.

Panelists will be trained to detect, identify, and quantify attributes that are commonly present in your company’s products.

Some of these attributes that can be considered are summarized in Table 4.

NOTE: These should be discussed and confirmed prior to the training course.

Table 4: References used to train panelists on the attributes present in your company’s products

Section 4: Final training and practice using your company’s products

The practice session will provide a review of all descriptive panel concepts including:

• Panel training
• Rating scale
• Data collection
• Data analysis and interpretation
• Reporting

Ideally descriptive panels have 10 to 15 expert panelists that have been pre-selected and trained.

Panelists should be allergy free, not pregnant, and not taking medication.

Candidates must be informed about the type of products they will be testing and be willing to test such products.

Selection of the expert panel is based on a series of acuity tests that determines if each candidate panelist is able to detect, identify, and quantify specific attributes necessary to fulfill the mandate of the panel.

After panelists are selected they must be trained.

In this course we will assume that all participants are willing and able to detect, identify, and quantify sensory attributes of various products.

Training an expert panel usually requires 50 hours or more of initial work followed by regular maintenance training.

This training session will provide the basics that are needed for your company to develop a descriptive testing program.

Based on skills we will teach we recommend that your company conduct some additional training in-house based on the concepts you learn in this course.

Training will follow Spectrum Method References and Scales. This is the standard method for training descriptive panels.

 

All courses conducted at Utah State University will be run through Utah State University.  Applicable university overhead fees will apply.

Courses conducted off-campus or at a site you choose can be offered by Silvana Martini on a private contract basis.