Designs for sensory experiments and product optimisation: A comprehensive review

Research in the fields of postharvest technology and food and nutrition are rapidly advancing with sensory experiments playing a major role in assessing consumer preference. Understanding various design and analysis approaches for conducting sensory experiments is crucial for obtaining meaningful results. This article provides a comprehensive review on evaluation methods, such as discrimination, affective, descriptive and quality tests; experimental designs, such as Completely Randomised Design, Randomised Complete Block Design, Balanced Incomplete Block Design, Factorial experiments, Williams Latin Square Design, and Response Surface Methodology (Central Composite Design, Box Behnken Design, Plackett-Burman Design), analysis techniques such as T-test, Analysis of Variance, Principal Component Analysis, and other non-parametric tests, along with different software packages used in sensory researches. It highlights the importance of selecting appropriate design and analysis methods based on study objectives and data characteristics with practical examples.