The intensities of the gustatory attributes of table olives is one of the sensory set of parameters evaluated
by trained sensory panels accordingly to the recommendations of the International Olive Council.
However this is an expensive and time-consuming process that only allows the evaluation of a limited
number of samples per day. So, an electronic tongue coupled with multivariate statistical tools, is proposed
for assessing the median intensities of acid, bitter and salty tastes perceived in table olives. The
results showed that the device, coupled with linear discriminant analysis, could be used as a taste sensor,
allowing classifying aqueous standard solutions according to the three basic tastes (repeated K-fold
cross-validation: 98% ± 3% of correct classifications) based on the electrochemical signals of 5 sensors. It
was demonstrated that the taste sensor with multiple linear regression models, enabled quantifying the
median intensities of the three basic tastes (repeated K-fold cross-validation: R2 0.96 ± 0.04) perceived
in table olives by a trained sensory panel, based on the potentiometric fingerprints (21e25 signal profiles)
of aqueous olive pastes and brines. The overall satisfactory results showed the electronic tongue
potential to assess the intensities of gustatory attributes of table olives, formerly only achievable by
sensory panels.
This work was financially supported by Project POCI-01e0145-
FEDER-006984 e Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM and by Project
UID/QUI/00616/2013 e CQ-VR both funded by FEDER - Fundo
Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional through COMPETE2020 -
Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização
(POCI) e and by national funds through FCT - Fundaç~ao para a
Ci^encia e a Tecnologia, Portugal. Strategic funding of UID/BIO/
04469/2013 unit is also acknowledged. Nuno Rodrigues thanks FCT,
POPH-QREN and FSE for the Ph.D. Grant (SFRH/BD/104038/2014).
