Development of Teeth Probe for Analysis of Correlation between Mechanical and Sensory Properties of Apples

Measurement of textural properties using simple mechanical probe is difficult to describe subjective sensory of intrinsic during the human biting. The aims of this study are to measure mechanical properties with teeth probe which was developed to simulate human teeth with upper and lower jaws, using a texture analyzer and detected acoustics with a connected acoustic emission detector, simultaneously to enhance the correlation between sensory and textural evaluations of apples. With the teeth probe, relatively high correlations between textural and acoustic properties were seen compared to those using the blade and upper teeth probes, in which crispness had high correlation with sweetness (R2 = 0.96), juiciness (R2 = 0.98), and overall texture (R2 = 0.97). These results demonstrate the reliability of a combination of mechanical and acoustic systems equipped with a teeth probe for texture analysis of apples and the potential for extension to other foods. Practical Applications Teeth probe was developed and utilized to determine the correlation between sensory and textural evaluations of apples and establish a reliable method for analysis of food properties. Principal component analysis (PCA) analysis of the sensory and textural attributes revealed high correlations between the mechanical and acoustic properties in all groups of apples. These results demonstrate the reliability of our teeth probe using combined mechanical and acoustic measurements for texture analysis of apples.