Nagano firm, university collaborate on building soba taste rating machine

Yatsurugigiken Inc. and Shinshu University’s Faculty of Agriculture, both in Nagano Prefecture, joined forces to create a machine that estimates the tastiness of soba or buckwheat noodles within seconds..

They expect restaurant operators, millers, agricultural cooperatives, and those from related industries be interested in the device.

According to Naoya Shimizu, president of Yatsurugigiken, millers have relied on skilled workers’ insights for flavor assessment, but their machine could evaluate the noodle’s quality in an objective fashion,

Soba noodle flavor is difficult to predict because the manner of boiling can change how they smell and taste.

Because of this, engineers from Yatsurugigiken and Shinshu University computed savory levels for buckwheat flour, the key component of soba.

They discovered that they could quickly assess the flavor index levels of phospholipids, proteins, and other components by applying UV LED-induced fluorescence to about 2 grams of buckwheat flour.

The device displays its evaluations on a scale of 1 to 100 in four categories, including fragrance and color.

The technology, which Shimizu referred to as the first of its sort in the world, excited him, he said.