Defining our food

Our Sensory Evaluation Panellists are trained to detect small differences in the taste, texture and smell of foods. This differs from consumer panellists who provide their thoughts on a food. The sensory panel gives important feedback to our researchers about the foods products and packaging they are working on. They also evaluate food products for clients.

Some of our research programmes including sensory evaluation are the:

• Convenient snack foods programme aiming for products with the appeal of fresh baked foods, but with an extended shelf life and specific health benefits.

• ‘Vital Vegetables®’ programme which aims to produce fresh, flavoursome vegetables with enhanced health benefits. Scientists are working to produce vegetables with phytochemical components, like antioxidants, in good quantities. These components are already in vegetables, but in varying quantities depending on the vegetable, the cultivar, how it’s grown and handled after harvest.

• Seafood packaging programme that is extending the shelf-life of New Zealand seafoods so they retain the desired fresh qualities when they reach their international markets.

The people on these panels are often mums and dads, grandparents and shiftworkers keen to contribute to food and packaging development. In fact people from all walks of life can assist in sensory evaluation if their commitments are flexible enough.

Crop & Food Research advertises for panellists every couple of years.

We need people who can spend a 1-2 hours, once or twice a week during the school hours - usually after lunch. We seek dedicated people available for the long term for this intermittent work. Panellists are employed by Crop & Food Research and sign a casual worker contract.

• Forward your name and contact details to Virginia Corrigan.

• Taking up an invitation spend two hours at Crop & Food Research, on Batchelar Rd in Palmerston North, to test your abilities. This could be likened to a job interview for work as a Sensory Evaluation Panellist. You will not be paid for it. You will be asked to identify subtle differences in the taste, texture and odour of different foods and drinks. And you will be asked to identify odours and/or flavours.

• You will be asked to taste several small amounts of a food or drink. You may be asked to rank samples in order of sweetness, bitterness, saltiness or sourness, or to identify the different sample in a set of three.

• For example: You maybe presented with four small cups of juice and asked to rank them in order of sweetness.

• Or, you maybe asked to detect and define smells from four separate bottles.

Don’t worry if you struggle with these tests.

• You may be asked to return for a further one to two hours to be retested. This is a continuation of your job interview and is unpaid. If you have a good memory and suitable level of sensitivity for odour and taste differences you may be invited to join one of Crop & Food Research’s Sensory Evaluation Panels.

It is important that you have a genuine interest in helping and contributing to food development. Our Sensory Evaluation Panellists work as team and, with time, build a sense of working together for the greater good.

Training

Panellists are given some general training in sensory evaluation techniques, and are also given specific training for each project. This usually involves one and half hours once or twice in a week.

Training is given about the attributes of the food the scientists require feedback on. This maybe on an aspect of taste - bitterness, sweetness, saltiness or sourness. Or it could be related to texture, flavour and odour.

Panellists help develop a rating sheet to be used during the trial. This will list the standard rating procedures for each attribute to be tested in the trial.

The trial

When a trial is in progress Sensory Evaluation Panellists come to Crop & Food Research for about one and half hours twice a week. It should be noted that the frequency and length of each session varies for each project. Sometimes a test session takes only 10 minutes and sometimes there are two 20 minute test sessions with a 30 minutes break in-between. No matter how short or long the session, panellists are paid for a minimum of 1 ½ hours.

It should also be noted that the number of days between each session can vary. For example:

• Evaluation of a prototype snack bar may require panellists for up to one and a half hours for just five consecutive days.

• Or: A shelf life study may require panellists to taste food at irregular intervals over the shelf life of a product. For Example: after the product has been stored for one week, three weeks, six weeks and three months.

Samples of the food will be presented to panellists who will taste or smell it and score it on the sheet they’ve developed. Several samples may require tasting. Between tastings a palate cleanser may be given to neutralise the tastebuds making them ready for the next test. Finally, the score sheets are collected so the data can be analysed and feedback given to the scientists developing the foods.