Kerala - Kochi   

E-nose to `smell' tea quality

K. Venkiteswaran

KOCHI: Move over tea tasters. You have got competition. And it is very well here to stay. So sharpen your noses and fine-tune the taste buds or you are sure to lose out to electronic counterparts.

Yes, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) has indigenously developed a tea quality monitoring instrument, otherwise to be known as `E-nose'.

A few years ago, when the tea industry was in a crisis and when the low prices were attributed to poor quality tea, the United Planters' Association of Southern India (UPASI) felt it necessary to import an `Electronic Tongue' to be able to objectively measure the quality parameters of tea. The UPASI Tea Research Foundation wrote to the Tea Board for financial assistance for importing the instrument. The Tea Board requested the National Tea Research Foundation (NTRF) to look into the matter. They identified that CDAC would be able to develop an electronic tongue and entrusted the project to CDAC.

UPASI president J.K. Thomas said that the scientists at CDAC were able to demonstrate a working model at a recently held workshop in Kolkata and the instrument seemed to have the potential to improve the qualities of Indian Tea significantly.

The electronic nose is an instrument that is designed to detect and discriminate among complex odours using an array of sensors consisting of a number of broadly tuned (non-special) sensors that are treated with a variety of odour sensitive biological or chemical materials. An odour stimulus generates a characteristic fingerprint from this array of sensors. Patterns or fingerprints from known odours can subsequently be classified and identified, said a communication from UPASI.

This system was capable of sensing volatile compounds of tea and reliably predicting tea taster-like scores with a high degree of accuracy. Neural network based `soft computing techniques' are used to tune near accurate co-relation smell print of the multi-sensor array with that of the Tea Tasters' scores.

The system has software frame work designed with adequate flexibility and openness so that Tea Planters (and Tasters) can themselves train the system with their own way of scoring and the system will, then on, reliably predict such smell print scores.

This, however, seems to have put Tea Tasters on the defensive, much like the way farm workers felt at the time the tractor was introduced and the bank employees resisted the introduction of computers. Time will surely prove that this instrument will be as useful to the Tea Taster as it is to the Planter, said Mr Thomas.

Further, the electronic nose can be used to monitor volatile emission patterns in the fermentation process during the fermentation period and detect the smell changes to mark the so-called `first nose' and `second nose.' This has a very significant impact on the ability of the Tea factory management to monitor quality objectively while the tea is in the process of being manufactured. Presently, the quality of the tea is determined after it is manufactured and normally serves only as a post-mortem report and does not help in correcting the situation. Thus, the E-nose will be a boon to tea factories too.

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