Quality assessment of green tea taste by using electronic tongue

Electronic tongue as a rapid analytical tool was used to assess the quality of green tea in this work. “Biluochen” green tea was studied. The total taste score value for the brewed tea infusion was attained by chemical evaluation method of green tea taste which was considered as the reference measurement. Firstly, the effects of production dates on taste quality of green tea and sensor signals of green tea infusion were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance (One-Way ANOVA). Subsequently, partial least squares and least squares support vector machines methods were contradistinctive used to establish the relationship between sensor signals and the total taste score value of tea infusion. Results showed that production dates had significant effects on green tea taste quality and sensor signals. The established least squares support vector machines model got better predictive effect with correlation coefficient of 0.906 and root mean square error of prediction of 4.077 when 4 principal components were included. This method will provide a basic for the intelligent evaluation of tea quality.