What+Went+Wrong?

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__ Possible causes for failure of screening experiments __ Careful analysis of the results show that the HOWs chosen (at the higher and lower levels) failed to generate any significant change in the responses to the WHATs. Moreover, it is observed that on an average the assessors have rated all the samples quite low and this proves to be a roadblock to the optimisation procedure. We approached Dr Peter with our results and it was decided that we would hold a panel with our supervisors to identify the possible causes of failure and suggest methods for improvement. It was during this session that we were able to truly fathom the magnitude of the temperature-time problem. The cereal tea which was served in pre- warmed ceramic cups lost temperature at the rate of up to 10oC per minute making the samples bitter in taste and cloudy in their appearance.



The other problem identified was that the 40 assessors in our panel would have had different tea drinking habits and the relative low rating could have been due to the variations in their style of consumption of tea (addition of milk, sugar etc. in their beverage).

__ Identified Solutions __ Finding a way to keep a constant temperature for so many samples and ensuring that all the assessors receive samples at the same temperature was a tricky bit in our product development. One advantage of so many heads working on the same problem is that one of them is bound to come up with a solution. The idea of using a thermo flask was suggested by one of the team members and we decided to conduct a mock panel among ourselves to ensure that the temperature and attributes of the tea do not change with time.

In order to overcome the problem with the assessors, a questionnaire was designed and will be presented to the assessors before the next taste panel to know their tea drinking habits/preferences.

1) Do you consume tea?

-YES or NO

2) Would you prefer green tea?

-YES or NO

3) If yes, would you buy green tea from the market?

-YES or NO

4) Do you add sugar to your tea?

-YES or NO

5) Do you add milk to your tea?

-YES or NO

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