Integrated Sensory Science

How are products innovated or optimised to ensure consumer acceptance? This course aims to develop first-hand insights in, and advanced practical skills on, the entire process of food product development/optimisation, drawing relationships between instrumental data of physical and chemical properties of food, sensory perceptual data, and data on consumer preferences.
Previous knowledge on advanced sensory methods, sensometrics, and the statistical software R are required to successfully pass the course.
The student will understand the associations between process and product variables on the one hand, and sensory perception and consumer preference on the other hand in an integrated way. Importantly, they will have to interpret and critically assess the relationships between these data and be able to draw informed conclusions/recommendations on the best product formulation.
The course will help develop team learning and management skills as well as individually-oriented research abilities during the whole course. The students, organized in groups of max. 4 people combining different backgrounds will work on a food case study which involve consumer-oriented sensory science problems as experienced by sensory specialists working in a company within the food industry. In groups, the students will have to make informed decisions on which instrumentation and advanced food-consumer-oriented sensory experiments to conduct to be able to successfully address the problem/goal. Advanced tools for instrumental measurements are combined with methods for sensory data analysis. Instrumental measures, carried out within the context of intensive practicals depend on the specific problem, but may include colour/video measurements, image analysis, texture and viscosity measurements, olfactometry, HPLC, and antioxidant activity. The students will also decide the most appropriate sensory and consumer techniques based on timing and resources limitations (as it happens in real-life industry cases). Profiling methods could be consumer-based methods such as free-choice profile, flash profile, CATA, etc. in combination with preference data. Students will link these three sets of results with the help of the multivariate statistical analyses performed individually.
In addition, guests from food industries will come and discuss real case studies to give a taste of how important Sensory Science is in Product development.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Assess the most common challenges that food companies face during product development
• Design an experimental protocol in order to address a given problem/goal
• Recognize instrumental analysis methods to apply to address a specific research problem
• Apply the most convenient instrumental analysis methods
• Evaluate which sensory and consumer tests are available and make an informed decision on the most convenient one(s)
• Analyse independently the results of different instrumental, sensory, and hedonic data
• Critically reflect on the results and use synthesis skills to deduce the most relevant information
• Communicate effectively scientific results and managerial advice on the most favourable solutions providing a robust rationale for the procedure followed

Mandatory Knowledge:
ZSS06100 Laboratory Safety
Assumed Knowledge:
Principles of Sensory Science; Advanced Sensory Methods and Sensometrics; Instrumental Sensory Science; Advanced Statistics (MAT24306 Advanced Statistics for Nutritionists or MAT20306 Advanced Statistics); ZSS06100 Laboratory Safety
Having passed the course Advanced Sensory Methods and Sensometrics (MCB32806) or an equivalent one is strongly recommended to successfully pass this course.