The highly skilled job of professional tea tasters in India is about to be handled by electrodes say the scientists at “Centre for Development of Advanced Computing”. The e-taster or e-tongue as some prefer to call it will actually be mimicking the functions of our taste buds and analyze as well as validate the results after testing the popular brew.

The tea exports are bound to go up with the able assistance of electronics feel the experts. Traditionally, India had always depended upon the skills of professional tasters who taste the brew by rolling it on their tongues and sniffing the aroma by sipping it carefully. This has been the standard practice for evaluating the quality of tea since age-old times.

The electronic taster, on the other hand, will be able to adjudge tea simply by measuring the concentration of theaflavin, a compound present in the tea. Both the astringency as well as the color of the tea  can be analyzed quantitatively with the aid of this instrument.

The E-taster was demonstrated at the “National Tea Research Foundation” in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata very recently. Various tea planters associations have been keen to implement the method of e-tasting which is certain to be error free to a large extent.

“The Tea Board of India” is particularly concerned about the quality issues which has plagued the industry since 2001 when Libya rejected Indian tea citing poor quality as did not adhere to the international standards.

Apart from quality, the e-taster is believed to provide an inexpensive means of assessment which might augur well for the country once the tea industry implements it.  However, the human taster is not be replaced by the machine. On the contrary, the instrument will provide a much simpler and quicker method of assessing the taste and can prove to be an indispensible aid to the professionals engaged in tea tasting.

Well, we hope that Indian tea industry will be able to export quality tea to the world soon with the e-taster managing to provide us with a superior quality brew that brings on the cheers!

Image Credit- it.wikipedia.org