Comparing information obtained from ranking and descriptive tests of four sweet corn products

Descriptive profiling is known to require long and expensive training of as sessors to provide reliable and consistent results. However, alternative me thods for obtaining this type of information are limited. Two experiments w ere conducted to compare the quality of results obtained by conventional pr ofiling and an alternative solution, a ranking test. In the first experimen t, a trained panel of eight assessors evaluated 10 attributes of sweet corn whereas in the second experiment, an untrained panel of 20 assessors perfo rmed the same task on the same samples but using a ranking procedure. The r esults from both experiments are coherent as far as overall product discrim ination is concerned. Slight discrepancies were found in the discriminating attributes from one panel to another. These experiments also showed that m ethods used to measure consensus for profile data such as generalised Procr ustes analysis can be applied to ranking data to provide the same kind of r esults. The findings suggest that whenever one has insufficient time to tra in a panel, one should consider using an untrained panel and conduct a rank ing test. Further studies, however, are needed to verify if ranking tests c an be used fruitfully or adapted to a wider range of products and a greater number of attributes. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.