BS EN ISO 11132:2021

What is ISO 11132 about?  

ISO 11132 discusses sensory analysis. ISO 11132 gives guidelines for assessing the overall performance of a quantitative descriptive panel and the performance of each panel member. ISO 11132 is applicable to the validation of the training of individual assessors or panels, as well as to the performance monitoring of established panels. 

The methods specified in ISO 11132 are for monitoring and assessing the ability of a panel and its assessors to discriminate between products, the agreement between assessors of the same panel and the repeatability of these assessors in their intensity scoring. 

Note: ISO 11132 does not apply to the panel performance for descriptive methods where the individual scores of each assessor are not recorded, where there is no single list of attributes that is common to all the assessors, or where dominance rather than intensity is measured. 

Who is ISO 11132 for? 

ISO 11132 on guidelines for sensory analysis is useful for: 

• Food processing companies 
• Sensory panel members 
• Sensory panels authenticators 

Why should you use ISO 11132?  

A panel of assessors can be used as an instrument to identify products’ sensory attributes and to assess the magnitude of sensory attributes. Performance is the measure of the ability of a panel or an assessor to make reliable and valid attribute assessments across the products being evaluated. 

Measuring performance enables the panel leader to improve panel and assessor output, to identify issues and retraining needs or to identify assessors who are not performing well enough to continue participating. 

ISO 11132 helps users by providing guidelines for assessing the overall performance of a quantitative descriptive panel and the performance of each panel member. ISO 11132 assists panel leaders to appraise continuously the performance of panels or individual assessors. 

ISO 11132 specifies methods for monitoring and assessing the ability of a panel and its assessors to discriminate between products, the agreement between assessors of the same panel and the repeatability of these assessors in their intensity scoring. 

What is changed since the last update?  

BS EN ISO 11132:2021 supersedes ISO 11132:2012. BS EN ISO 11132:2021 includes some technical changes with respect to ISO 11132:2012. These include: 

• The title has been changed to specify that the document is applicable to descriptive sensory panels 
• The Scope has been revised: to provide a distinction of application for validation and monitoring, reduced to measure repeatability only, and reproducibility has been stated to be out of scope, the type of quantitative descriptive sensory panels for which the document is applicable to has been specified 
• The definitions have been revised and new terminological entries have been added 
• The process for the dedicated procedure has been improved 
• Experimental designs have been reviewed and augmented 
• Statistical analyses related to analysis of variance have been reviewed and augmented to include more models, especially regarding sessions and panellists (fixed or random) effects and interactions