A multichannel taste sensor, namely an electronic tongue, with global selec
tivity is composed of several kinds of lipid/polymer membranes for transfor
ming information about substances producing taste into electrical signals,
which are input to a computer. The sensor output exhibits different pattern
s for chemical substances which have different taste qualities such as salt
iness, sourness and bitterness, whereas it exhibits similar patterns for ch
emical substances with similar tastes. The sensor responds to the taste its
elf, as can be understood from the fact that taste interactions such as the
suppression effect, which appears for mixtures of sweet and bitter substan
ces, can be reproduced well. The suppression of the bitterness of quinine a
nd a drug substance by sucrose can be quantified. Amino acids can be classi
fied into several groups according to their own tastes on the basis of sens
or outputs. The tastes of foodstuffs such as beer, coffee, mineral water, m
ilk, sake, rice, soybean paste and vegetables can be discussed quantitative
ly using the taste sensor, which provides the objective scale for the human
sensory expression. The flavour of a wine is also discriminated using the
taste-odour sensory fusion conducted by combining the taste sensor and an o
dour-sensor array using conducting polymer elements. The taste sensor can a
lso be applied to measurements of water pollution. Miniaturization of the t
aste sensor using FET produces the same characteristics as those of the abo
ve taste sensor by measuring the gate-source voltage. Use of the taste sens
or will lead to a new era of food and environmental sciences.