Assessment of Taste Panelists

The tasting performance of 81 tasters who took part in 58 rank type laboratory taste panels on a range of products was studied by examining correlation coefficients, termed PO correlation coefficients, between personal rank scores and the overall rank score for each panel. The tasters who had the highest PO correlation coefficients over a number of panels can be considered as above average tasters. There was incomplete agreement between the rating of tasters as determined by this method and that obtained by screening the panelists with sweet, sour, salt and bitter solutions.