Analysis of umami taste and their contributing compounds in edible fungi based on electronic tongue, sensory evaluation, and chemical analysis

Edible fungi are rich in nutrients and have unique umami taste, which varies with genotypes, growth conditions, and harvest time. In this study, umami compounds in 12 species of edible fungi are analyzed and identified by electronic tongue. Through principal component analysis and discriminant factor analysis, these 2 methods could be successfully distinguished the variety of 12 edible fungi. Besides, the umami intensity of edible fungi soup is also evaluated by sensory and chemical analysis methods, for example, Tricholoma matsutake is 5.60 ± 0.34 and 5.17 ± 0.38, Coprinus comatus is 7.70 ± 0.23 and 9.83 ± 0.34 through sensory evaluation and electronic tongue respectively, followed by establishing the correlation from the response data by PLS (partial least squares analysis). According to the PLS model, with a correlation coefficients of calibration models greater than 0.7 and the low root mean square error of calibration and root mean square error of prediction values, the results correlate well with each other. Therefore, we can indicate that the electronic tongue is able to analyze and evaluate the umami intensity of edible fungi to some extent.