A Potentiometric Electronic Tongue as a Discrimination Tool of Water-Food Indicator/Contamination Bacteria

Microorganism assessment plays a key role in food quality and safety control but conventional techniques are costly and/or time consuming. Alternatively, electronic tongues (E-tongues) can fulfill this critical task. Thus, potentiometric lab-made E-tongue (40 lipid sensor membranes) was used to differentiate four common contamination bacteria, including two Gram positive (Enterococcus faecalis, Staphylococcus aureus) negative (Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa). Principal component analysis linear discriminant analysis-simulated annealing algorithm (LDA-SA) showed that the signal profiles acquired during of aqueous solutions containing known amounts each studied bacteria allowed satisfactory differentiation bacterial strains. An E-tongue-LDA-SA model (12 non-redundant sensors) correctly classified 98 ± 5% samples (repeated K-fold-CV), performance which be attributed capability membranes establish electrostatic interactions/hydrogen bonds with hydroxyl, amine carbonyl groups, comprised outer membranes. Furthermore, multiple regression models, based on selected subsets sensors (12–15 sensors), also quantifying contents (0.993 0.011 ≤ R2 0.998 0.005, for repeated K-fold-CV). In conclusion, could great value as preliminary diagnosis tool.