Sensory expertise

In the future an all-embracing understanding of sensory intelligence, sensory creation, sensory technology and sensory science will contribute to the success of the flavour and fragrance industry. Sensory expertise reveals today how much is still to discover and innovate in our industry [25]. 

Professionals who work with the product every day develop a sensory expertise that could be the core of their activity (e.g. perfumers), or that may be less conscious and yet extremely useful in their work (e.g. plant operators, hairdressers). In many cases, it would potentially be very interesting to include the input from those professional experts in sensory smdies. Recently, researchers have started to apply rapid sensory profiling methods as a way to get sensory input from professionals. Such attempts are as yet very infrequent, but this trend is very promising, with many options remaining to be investigated. 

In this category of subjects, we consider professionals who use their senses on a daily basis in their work in order to create, develop or optimize products. Among such experts, flavourists, perfumers and oenologists immediately come to mind because of their remarkable skills in olfaction. However, other talented professionals, such as chefs and bakers, also rely on their senses to create and control the course of their production. They have probably developed a more multisensory expertise. Acute sensory expertise can also be found in non-food sectors. For instance, aestheticians and hairdressers are certainly sensory experts the same goes for professional car drivers. 

Besides, a major difficulty in taking such sensory expertise into account relates to language. Professional sensory experts indeed use a very specific, almost personal, descriptive vocabulary. As a result, it is sometimes difficult for them to objectively share their perceptions with other experts (Brochet and Dubourdieu, 2001 Feria-Morales, 2002 Sauvageot et al, 2006) or to communicate with R D. 

Rapid methods can be adapted so that team tasting can be optimized and yield more actionable results. Many of these methods can also be considered for integrating traditional sensory expertise. Accordingly, they may allow sensory description with different types of subjects (including children, elder people and patients) or even sensory profiling at home for in-use evaluation of prodncts. 

MB Froest, AC Noble. Preliminary study of the effect of knowledge and sensory expertise on liking for red wines. Am J Enol Viticult 53 275-284, 2002. 

There is no combination of chemical or physical analyses which can, or is ever likely to, replace human sensory evaluation completely. Sensory examination of wines employs two major approaches detecting differences and evaluating quaUty or, more briefly, analytical and hedonic (16,19). The former can be objective and the latter is inevitably somewhat subjective regardless of the expertise of the judges. 

In answering a customer brief such as that from Business Scents Ltd, a perfumer welcomes as much guidance as possible in how to win that brief successfully. The four disciplines mentioned above (sensory analysis, market research, statistics and psychology) together form a powerful analytical and predictive tool, different aspects of which can be used for guidance in perfume creation depending on the requirements of the brief. In the sections that follow in this chapter, a brief outline of the techniques currently used within each of these areas of expertise is given, as are examples of how they could be used to fulfil the Business Scents brief. 

To understand how product formulae or process variables affect its sensory properties. An underlying objective is usually to acquire knowledge and develop technical skills and expertise ... 

When DA applies to quality control goals, it is frequent to witness sensory panels that are constituted of plant workers. In most cases, the techniques that are implemented are variations of conventional profiling techniques. However, these techniques do not allow fully taking into account the expertise that the plant operators may have developed. Unfortunately, the possibility to rely on such expertise to improve quality control has been barely considered so far (loannou et al, 2002). 

In addition to this, one may want to assess the quality of FP measurements in terms of panel performance. In this regard, it should first be mentioned that panel performance cannot be understood as in conventional consensus-based methods, since panellists do not use the same attributes, and even if they do use the same words these words may not be assumed to convey the exact same sensory notion. Also, one should bear in mind that FP results are dependent on subjects descriptive skills, levels and fields of expertise. As already mentioned, should one wish to get the most comprehensive description of a product set, it is advisable to recruit experienced subjects with complementary fields of expertise. 

If this is not the case, but if you already have knowledge or expertise about the sensory space derived from your product set, use it You can, for example, process a classification of your products on the basis of a quantitative analysis or a free sorting task. After classification, you can choose a prototype of each cluster as the best representative of this cluster (the closest to the barycentre, for example). 

The interaction between flavourists and sensory experts induces various challenges, due to their different fields of expertise and ways of working. Fortunately, the difficulties of communication can be overcome thanks to specific strategies which involve flavourists in sensory sessions. They can either be invited to attend sensory... 

In an ideal situation, flavourists wonld intnitively understand outcomes provided by sensory experts. However, as their backgronnds, their fields of expertise and then-ways of working are different, communication between these two functions is often challenging. In the following, I will present how these two types of experts differ, before presenting the solutions that we devised at Givaudan to improve the situation and make them work more efficiently together. 

Table 18.1 Summary of the main differences between flavourists and sensory experts fields of expertise and ways of working...

---