An electronic tongue design for the detection of adulteration in saffron samples

Saffron is popular because of its delicate aroma, attractive color and medical properties and is used as a food additive. Moreover, due to the high cost of saffron, adulteration is rampant in the local market. In this research, a portable electronic tongue system consisted of an array of five voltammetric sensors was developed and successfully used to discriminate adulteration in saffron samples. Adulterated saffron samples were prepared by combining of original saffron with different proportions of yellow styles, safflower, dyed corn stigma, and tartrazine and methyl orange. The voltammetric responses obtained from the sensor array of the electronic tongue were specific for each type of saffron and there was observed that shape and place of the peaks in each voltammogram regard to different sample solutions were various and specific for, and were depend to the redox components of the corresponding samples. The extracted features from obtained signals and voltammograms, after preprocessing, by the sensory analysis were used for processing data by (PCA) and (LDA). As observed from PCA scores plot, all the samples could be clearly discriminated from each other. Also, the result of classification of samples revealed that e-tongue system can discriminate and detect the adulteration in saffron samples.