Remote testing: sensory test during Covid-19 pandemic and beyond

Restrictions adopted by many countries in 2020 due to Covid-19 pandemic had severe consequences on themanagement of sensory and consumer testing that strengthened the tendency to move data collection out of thelaboratory. Remote sensory testing, organized at the assessor's home or workplace and carried out under the liveonline supervision of the panel leader, represents a trade-off between adequate control and the convenience ofconducting testing out of the lab. The Italian Sensory Science Society developed the "Remote sensory testing"research project aimed at testing the effectiveness and validity of the sensory tests conducted remotely through acomparison with evaluations in a classical laboratory setting. Guidelines were developed to assist panel leaders insetting up and controlling the evaluation sessions in remote testing conditions. Different methods wereconsidered: triangle and tetrad tests, Descriptive Analysis and Temporal Dominance of Sensations tests, all ofwhich involved trained panels, and Check-All-That-Apply and hedonic tests with consumers. Remote sensorytesting provided similar results to the lab testing in all the cases, with the exception of the tetrad test run at work.Findings suggest that remote sensory testing, if conducted in strict compliance with specifically developedsensory protocols, is a promising alternative to laboratory tests that can be applied with both trained assessorsand consumers even beyond the global pandemic.