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Integrated Determination of Tea Quality Based on Taster’s Evaluation, Biochemical Characterization and Use of Electronics

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Book cover Sensing Technology: Current Status and Future Trends II

Part of the book series: Smart Sensors, Measurement and Instrumentation ((SSMI,volume 8))

Abstract

The summation of the desirable/positive attributes comprising aroma/flavor, strength, colour, briskness and character of infused tea leaves represent the quality of tea. Human experts have been traditionally assessing the tea quality by eye, nose and tongue approximations, but it suffers from biasness, inaccuracy and variability. Based upon the correlation of quality with chemical composition, chemists have developed chemical methods for the determination of tea quality. This needs highly sophisticated instruments like HPLC, GC, GC-MS, LC-MS etc, costly chemicals and expert man power. Moreover, these methods are very much time consuming. Thus, to find an accurate, cheep and real time method for tea quality assessment, recently electronic sensors mimicking the human vision, nose and tongue are being implemented for determining tea quality. All these methods have their own merits and demerits, when applied/developed independently. In this book chapter, a brief description of working procedure and usefulness of E-Vision, E-Nose and E-Tongue has been explained. In addition, certain possibilities have also been cited to highlight the productiveness of bio-mimicking sensors in quality assessment methodology and in the integration of perception for various physical attributes of tea, use of biochemical analysis and electronics.

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Acknowledgments

Authors are thankful to CDAC, Kolkata for providing the instrument E-Nose and E-Vision to Darjeeling Tea Research and Development Center.

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Correspondence to P. Biswas .

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Biswas, P., Chatterjee, S., Kumar, N., Singh, M., Basu Majumder, A., Bera, B. (2014). Integrated Determination of Tea Quality Based on Taster’s Evaluation, Biochemical Characterization and Use of Electronics. In: Mason, A., Mukhopadhyay, S., Jayasundera, K., Bhattacharyya, N. (eds) Sensing Technology: Current Status and Future Trends II. Smart Sensors, Measurement and Instrumentation, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02315-1_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02315-1_5

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