Electronic Noses and Tongues Applications for the Food and Pharmaceutical Industries.docVIP

Sensors 2011, 11, 4744-4766; doi:10.3390/s110504744 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 /journal/sensors Review Electronic Noses and Tongues: Applications for the Food and Pharmaceutical Industries Elizabeth A. Baldwin *, Jinhe Bai, Anne Plotto and Sharon Dea USDA-ARS Citrus Subtropical Products Laboratory, 600 Ave S N.W., Winter Haven, FL 33881, USA; E-Mails: jinhe.bai@ (J.B.); anne.plotto@ (A.P.); sharon.dea@ (S.D.) * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: liz.baldwin@; Tel.: +1-863-293-4133; Fax: +1-863-299-8678. Received: 1 March 2011; in revised form: 14 April 2011 / Accepted: 16 April 2011 / Published: 2 May 2011 Abstract: The electronic nose (e-nose) is designed to crudely mimic the mammalian nose in that most contain sensors that non-selectively interact with odor molecules to produce some sort of signal that is then sent to a computer that uses multivariate statistics to determine patterns in the data. This pattern recognition is used to determine that one sample is similar or different from another based on headspace volatiles. There are different types of e-nose sensors including organic polymers, metal oxides, quartz crystal microbalance and even gas-chromatography (GC) or combined with mass spectroscopy (MS) can be used in a non-selective manner using chemical mass or patterns from a short GC column as an e-nose or “Z” nose. The electronic tongue reacts similarly to non-volatile compounds in a liquid. This review will concentrate on applications of e-nose and e-tongue technology for edible products and pharmaceutical uses. Keywords: biosensors; chemical sensors; multivariate statistics; neural networks; pattern recognition; gas chromatography; mass spectroscopy; liquid chromatography; sensory; flavor; shelf life 1. Introduction Electronic noses (e-noses) and electronic tongues (e-tongues) crudely mimic the human smell and taste sensors (gas and liqui