Scientists create artificial ‘tongue’ of gold to test maple syrup

Team Udayavani, May 9, 2020, 1:57 PM IST

Scientists in Quebec have created an artificial tongue that can taste the flavor profiles of maple syrup

The tongue is made of gold nanoparticles that can quickly taste and categorize maple syrup. The tongue changes color to indicate how a sample of maple syrup tastes. The results are visible to the naked eye in seconds. The tongue was developed to help producers streamline their maple syrup production process.

The ‘artificial tongue’ study was published in the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry journal Analytical Methods, and detects changes in colour to show how syrup samples taste.

Maple syrup has around 60 categories of taste, similar to wine with its multitude of flavour profiles. To use the artificial tongue, researchers pour a few drops into the gold nanoparticle reagent and wait 10 seconds. If the result stays red, it is a premium quality syrup. If it’s blue, the syrup may have a flavour defect.