GRAPES: A METHOD AND A SAS® PROGRAM FOR GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF ASSESSOR PERFORMANCES

GRAPES computes individual and global analyses of variance for sensory profiling data, consisting of several sessions in which all the panelists gave scores to all the products for a number of attributes. The fitted model takes into account the session effect. GRAPES summarizes the results by means of graphical assessor scatterplots which allow to check and to compare panelist performances, such as the way of using scale, the reliability, the discrimination power and the agreement with the panel. In addition, GRAPES detects the outliers for each of these criterion. The usefulness of GRAPES for the panel leader will be demonstrated using texture and flavor profiling of 4 restructured steaks by 12 assessors for 15 attributes. The SAS® program GRAPES, available by e-mail from the author, requires the SAS/BASE®, SAS/STAT®, SAS/GRAPH® and SAS/IML® softwares.