Coffee Label Assessment Using Sensory and Biometric Analysis of Self-Isolating Panelists through Videoconference

Review of technology advances to assess rice quality traits and consumer perception

The increase in rice consumption and demand for high-quality rice is impacted by the growth of socioeconomic status in developing countries and consumer awareness of the health benefits of rice consumption. The latter aspects drive the need for rapid, low-cost, and reliable quality assessment methods to produce high-quality rice according to consumer preference. This is important to ensure the sustainability of the rice value chain and, therefore, accelerate the rice industry toward digital agriculture. This review article focuses on the measurements of the physicochemical and sensory quality of rice, including new and emerging technology advances, particularly in the development of low-cost, non-destructive, and rapid digital sensing techniques to assess rice quality traits and consumer perceptions. In addition, the prospects for potential applications of emerging technologies (i.e., sensors, computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence) to assess rice quality and consumer preferences are discussed. The integration of these technologies shows promising potential in the forthcoming to be adopted by the rice industry to assess rice quality traits and consumer preferences at a lower cost, shorter time, and more objectively compared to the traditional approaches.

Effects of Different Beer Compounds on Biometrically Assessed Emotional Responses in Consumers

The study of emotional responses from consumers toward beer products is an important digital tool to obtain novel information about the acceptability of beers and their optimal physicochemical composition. This research proposed the use of biometrics to assess emotional responses from Mexican beer consumers while tasting top- and bottom-fermented samples. Furthermore, a novel emotional validation assessment using proven evoking images for neutral, negative, and positive emotions was proposed. The results showed that emotional responses obtained from self-reported emoticons and biometrics are correlated to the specific emotions evoked by the visual, aroma, and taste aspects of beers. Consumers preferred bottom-fermentation beers and disliked the wheat-based and higher-bitterness samples. Chemical compounds and concentrations were in accordance to previously reported research for similar beer styles. However, the levels of hordenine were not high enough to evoke positive emotions in the biometric assessment, which opens additional research opportunities to assess higher concentrations of this alkaloid to increase the happiness perception of low or non-alcoholic beers.

Digital technologies to assess yoghurt quality traits and consumers acceptability

BACKGROUND

Sensory biometrics provide advantages for consumer tasting by quantifying physiological changes and the emotional response from participants, removing variability associated with self-reported responses. The present study aimed to measure consumers' emotional and physiological responses towards different commercial yoghurts, including dairy and plant-based yoghurts. The physiochemical properties of these products were also measured and linked with consumer responses.

RESULTS

Six samples (Control, Coconut, Soy, Berry, Cookies and Drinkable) were evaluated for overall liking by n = 62 consumers using a nine-point hedonic scale. Videos from participants were recorded using the Bio-Sensory application during tasting to assess emotions and heart rate. Physicochemical parameters Brix, pH, density, color (L, a and b), firmness and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy were also measured. Principal component analysis and a correlation matrix were used to assess relationships between the measured parameters. Heart rate was positively related to firmness, yaw head movement and overall liking, which were further associated with the Cookies sample. Two machine learning regression models were developed using (i) NIR absorbance values as inputs to predict the physicochemical parameters (Model 1) and (ii) the outputs from Model 1 as inputs to predict consumers overall liking (Model 2). Both models presented very high accuracy (Model 1: R = 0.98; Model 2: R = 0.99).

CONCLUSION

The presented methods were shown to be highly accurate and reliable with respect to their potential use by the industry to assess yoghurt quality traits and acceptability. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Remote sensory assessment of beer quality based on visual perception of foamability and biometrics compared to standard emotional responses from affective images

The social isolation settings derived from the COVID-19 pandemic affected the standard sensory evaluation techniques used in the food and beverage industry. This situation forced companies and researchers to assess other options to continue conducting these tests in remote contactless locations. This study aimed to evaluate two sets of samples (i) six images from Geneva affective picture database (GAPED) and (ii) six videos of beer pouring using traditional self-reported sensory data and emotional response from consumers biometrics. Specifically, four research questions (RQ) arouse from this study: RQ1: are there significant differences between GAPED images and beers in unconscious and self-reported responses from consumers?, RQ2: are there any correlations between subconscious and self-reported responses from consumers when assessing beer?, RQ3: can consumers differentiate positive, neutral and negative images based on subconscious and self-reported responses?, RQ4: are there any relationships between subconscious and self-reported responses when assessing GAPED images and beers, and how are samples associated with variables? A total of 113 Mexican beer consumers participated in the virtual sensory session using an online videoconference software to record videos of participants during the session. Results showed there were significant differences (p < 0.05) between samples, especially for self-reported responses (RQ1), and several correlations between variables, such as positive correlations between the perceived quality of beers and happy emoji (r = 0.84), and negative correlation with confused emoji (r = -0.97; RQ2). Besides, using the proposed methods, consumers were able to correctly differentiate through elicited emotions the positive, neutral and negative GAPED images (RQ3). Regarding RQ4, several relationships were found between variables in both GAPED images and beers; however, it was found that different emotions were elicited depending of the stimuli used. The proposed method showed to be a reliable and practical option to conduct visual and potentially tasting sensory tests in isolation and recruit participants from different countries without travelling to collect their responses.

Differences in Hedonic Responses, Facial Expressions and Self-Reported Emotions of Consumers Using Commercial Yogurts: A Cross-Cultural Study

Hedonic scale testing is a well-accepted methodology for assessing consumer perceptions but is compromised by variation in voluntary responses between cultures. Check-all-that-apply (CATA) methods using emotion terms or emojis and facial expression recognition (FER) are emerging as more powerful tools for consumer sensory testing as they may offer improved assessment of voluntary and involuntary responses, respectively. Therefore, this experiment compared traditional hedonic scale responses for overall liking to (1) CATA emotions, (2) CATA emojis and (3) FER. The experiment measured voluntary and involuntary responses from 62 participants of Asian (53%) versus Western (47%) origin, who consumed six divergent yogurt formulations (Greek, drinkable, soy, coconut, berry, cookies). The hedonic scales could discriminate between yogurt formulations but could not distinguish between responses across the cultural groups. Aversive responses to formulations were the easiest to characterize for all methods; the hedonic scale was the only method that could not characterize differences in cultural preferences, with CATA emojis displaying the highest level of discrimination. In conclusion, CATA methods, particularly the use of emojis, showed improved characterization of cross-cultural preferences of yogurt formulations compared to hedonic scales and FER.