Quality control for herbal medicinal plants using a sensor array (an electronic tongue)

Abstract

Herbal medicinal plants have a crucial role in health and social concepts worldwide. The quality of these products affects the expected remedies when using them. There are several analytical methods used for identifying the composition and following these products shelf life. The objective of this study is to use an electronic tongue (ET) for quality control of a local herbal medicinal plant product called Relax. Two multivariate data analysis (MVDA) techniques, namely principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), were used to analyze the signals of measured samples. ET was able to follow the shelf life of the product and could identify when there was a change in its ingredients and this help in the benchmarking of the product. The obtained results may suggest the use of ET as a useful tool for herbal medicinal plant quality in the future.