Enhancing Sensory Perception of Plant Based Nutraceutical Drinks by Combining Plants from Different Sources: A Preliminary Study of Tea and Ginger Blend

Tea-ginger drink was selected for evaluation due to its nutraceutical potential. Panelists rated preference for drinks prepared from tea, ginger, and tea+ginger powder for colour, taste, and aroma. The obtained data were evaluated using analysis of variance, principal component analysis, and agglomerative hierarchical clustering. Also the colour preference scores were evaluated against instrumental colour measurements. The ginger drink had lower rating for colour preference and the tea drink had lower ratings for aroma and taste preference. However, the tea-ginger drink led to enhanced colour, aroma, and taste ratings. The colour preference was found to have highest correlation coefficient with the hue and chroma of the drinks [r(58)=-0.583, P<0.05 and r(58)=0.566, P<0.05]. This study suggests that a sensory quality deficiency in a particular plant based drink could be compensated for by blending the drink with another plant based drink. This approach could help improve the uptake of plant based nutraceutical drinks.