Evaluation of tomato paste quality by means of electronic nose and human panel of tasters

In spite to the wide diffusion that electronic nose applications are gaining, both at research and industrial level, few efforts have been putten in determining the performances of electronic nose in comparison with the human olfaction. In this paper the performances of an electronic nose, under development at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, have been compared with those of an expert panel of tasters, routinely working at the National Institute for the Nutrition. The scope of the test was the evaluation of the quality of a number of tomato pastes. Results shows a very significant qualitative agreement between the two methods, furthermore, as expected, electronic nose exhibits a less dispersion in the definition of the classes and a more defined classification profile.