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L.N. Revathy

The electronic tongue promises to revolutionise the tea-tasting process and could well become the flavour of the future.

ALL of us have heard of tea-tasters. Industrial houses dealing in tea cannot do without these experts who judge the quality of the tea using their sharp sense of sight, smell, touch and taste.

There is a strong feeling that for the tea-taster these are endowments by birth — they are born with them. But these natural talents will have to be developed over long years of practice before the palate is proficient to register even the minutest differences.

Further, a taster must have an in-depth knowledge of the prevailing market conditions, consumer preferences and manufacturing techniques while evaluating tea. It is only an excellent cup that truly cheers, and taste is something quite unique to the human palate. No wonder this craft is viewed with a tinge of awe and wonderment.

With over 1,500 types of teas grown over 25 countries across the globe, with the flavour, quality and character completely dependent on the type of soil, climate, altitude and region, it is indeed a challenging task for these tea-tasters and blenders to spot a perfect cup. Yet, very little has changed over the years in the way these professionals practise the art and develop their precision and palate skills.

Standardising - the objective

"I have never been convinced with manual tea-tasting. It is highly subjective. For exclusive teas, there is no yardstick to standardise against," says Udaychandran, Managing Director, IndcoServe, the apex small tea growers' industrial cooperative tea factories federation in Tamil Nadu.

Towards making this analysis more objective and intent on standardising the tea-tasting process, Udaychandran is contemplating introducing the electronic tongue, a device that is capable of detecting all the flavours known to man, and potentially thousands more. Although it is still not widely prevalent, the presence of this electronic sensory device is expected to revolutionise the tasting and quality-control process.

Take auction samples, for instance. They are offered in the thousands and one cannot dispute that the human tongue can show signs of fatigue, especially for bitterness, after some time. But this cannot happen with an electronic device which uses an array of taste sensors in analysing the samples, argues Udaychandran.

Researchers believe that this device could make human taste-testers obsolete — while making urine and blood analysis a whole lot more bearable.

At a time when the industry is talking of standardising the various processes, the electronic tongue will come in handy for the beverages industry to ensure that beverages coming off assembly lines are uniform in flavour, says Udaychandran.

The electronic tongue contains tiny beads analogous to taste buds.

Each `bud' is designed to latch on to specific flavour molecules and change colours when it finds one, be it sweet, sour, bitter or salty.

The buds are housed in pits on the surface of the tongue itself, which is made of silicone.

The electronic tongue, researchers say, would go beyond the four tastes — sweet, sour, salt and bitter — of the human tongue. While the mammalian tongue has only four receptors, the electronic tongue could have millions of receptors that are much more sensitive.

The new device is also finding f(l)avour with medical agencies for it can be implanted with receptors to test for everything, from blood cholesterol to cocaine, in urine samples.

lnr@thehindu.co.in

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