Olfactory perception, human importance

Flowever, human olfactory sensitivity, and especially aroma perception, can be affected by a large number of factors, such as age, gender, smoking habits, disease, or injury [5-8]. Such modulation of olfactory capacity can have dramatic impact on the results of sensory evaluation studies based on olfactory tasks. This is especially important in studies using only a few panelists [gas chromatography olfactometry (GCO), quantitative flavor profiling, etc.]. It thus seems that food flavor studies eould benefit from their panelists being assessed for olfactory and other sensory performance. 

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