Fuzzy Linguistic Olive Oil Sensory Evaluation Model based on Unbalanced Linguistic Scales
F.J. Estrella, M. Espinilla and L. Martinez
Sensory evaluation is a process that involves knowledge acquired via human senses. Generally, sensory evaluation processes are defined in unbalanced contexts because these are focused on one side of the scale used to collect sensory information. The olive oil sensory evaluation is defined in this kind of context to establish the quality of the olive oil, being the quality a key factor in its marketing. The international olive council established three quality categories and a quantitative method based on statistical analysis to classify a olive oil sample. The perceptions in sensory evaluation processes involves imprecision and uncertainty that has a non-probabilistic nature. Therefore, the use of the fuzzy linguistic approach for modeling and managing can provide successful results in such processes. This paper presents a fuzzy linguistic sensory evaluation model that uses an unbalanced linguistic scale in order to classify olive oil and its validation. The validation process has involved taster panels that choose and validate the unbalanced linguistic scale to measure the intensity of each sensory feature and classify olive oil, using an unbalanced linguistic scale. Finally, a software prototype that was developed to carry out the classification of olive oil samples with the fuzzy linguistic sensory evaluation model is also presented.
Keywords: Sensory evaluation, fuzzy linguistic approach, unbalanced linguistic scale, olive oil, linguistic information, perceptions