Application of a lab-made voltammetric electronic tongue to identify musty and vinegary defects in olive oils

The olive oil sector is undergoing a technological transformation promoted by high international competitiveness. This transformation must be aligned with the concepts of industry 4.0 that are already well defined and implemented in other sectors. The integration of advanced sensorics in the process phase in which the quality of the manufactured product is inspected is key to responding in the shortest possible time to deviations in the desired quality. In this work, the results of the experimentation carried out with an e-tongue voltammetric sensor are presented to evaluate its potential in the detection of two of the organoleptic defects that appear more frequently in olive oil (musty and vinegary). This sensor has been built in the research group’s laboratory and is made up of three metals in the measurement probe (nickel, silver and copper). Three classification algorithms (Support Vector Machines, Naïve Bayes and Classification Trees) were used and musty-type defect was identified with a success rate of 72%, while the vinegary-type defect was detected with a success rate of 84%.