关键词: 电子舌, 花椒, 麻味, 定量, 差别度, 欧氏距离

Abstract: Pungency is a kind of sensory attributes which stimulate strong and is easy to let evaluators feel fatigue. It is very important to establish an electronic evaluation method to replace sensory method for quickly evaluating pungent intensity in batch. In order to carry out pungency evaluation by electronic tongue, there are two questions should be solved. First, electronic tongue should be capable to response for different pungent concentrations quantitatively. Second, the specific relationship between pungent concentrations and pungent intensity should be existed. In order to explore prediction model for pungent concentration by electronic tongue, the extract of dry Zanthoxylum bungeanum sample was used as the research object, methods and principles of difference test for sensory evaluation were adopted, samples were detected using parallel measurement, and Euclidean Distance was used to present differential degree between fixed reference and unknown samples. Results showed that the differential degree could well response to variances in series concentration samples, especially the variances could be represented by linear mathematical model. Using this model to predict unknown samples showed that the relative standard deviation between predicted value and actual value was less than 20%, which satisfied with requirements of sensory evaluation for quantitation. It was a breakthrough in predicting pungent concentration, and also it laid a solid foundation for quantitative prediction of pungent intensity, for which provided a method for semi-quantitative and quantitative determination.

Key words: Electronic Tongue, Zanthoxylum bungeanum Maxim, Pungency, Quantitation, Differential Degree, Euclidean Distance