RELIABILITY OF SENSORY ASSESSORS: ISSUES OF RETENTION AND LEARNING

Summary

The objective of this study was to investigate whether the sensory performance of assessors in a sensory panel may be retained after years of retirement from sensory work. The approach was to register previous performance in basic tastes identification tests and to compare to their present performance in the same tests as well as in judging complex foods. The results showed that the identified performance was within the response curve of the performance over several years. However, there was no clear relationship between the performances in identification and in judging foods. The retired assessors who had been away from sensory work for several years showed lower performance than the active assessors did, but with larger variability within the group. The retired assessors performed better than the active assessors concerning the evaluation of bitter.