Lecturers: Flavia Gasperi, Eugenio Aprea, Isabella Endrizzi

Summary: This course, organized in three modules, will provide fundamental knowledge in sensory analysis and consumer science to investigate the perceived quality of food and its relation to consumer responses.

Module 1 (8 hours): Sensory analysis principles and good practices. Introduction on basic principles, potentials and problems of sensory techniques applied in food industry. General rules to conduct sensory tests. Overview on sensory methods: traditional discriminant and descriptive methodologies and new ones.

Module 2 (8 hours): Sensory properties of food. Explore the association between food properties and sensory perception. Describe and measure which are the physical and chemical characteristics of food matrices that mainly influence our sensory perception. How to correlate instrumental determinations and sensory data: data treatment and predictive modelling.

Module 3 (8 hours): Preference and acceptability of food. Learn consumer-testing methods and associated data analysis procedures. Understand the basic tools of quantitative consumer research. Learn how to segment consumer populations and the ways to relate consumer data to sensory evaluation data in order to optimize product sensory quality and marketing opportunities.

Skills acquired: The course will improve knowledge and understanding of potentialities, strengths and limitations of the most common sensory  methods. Students will be able to critically choice the most effective methodologies in function of specific "sensory questions" and to manage and interpret sensory data.

Course schedule 

Evaluation procedure: Final written report or presentation