Electronic nose and electronic mucosa as innovative instruments for real-time monitoring of food dryers

• Electronic nose and electronic mucosa are reliable instruments in food industry.
• Real-time monitoring the changes in drying technology can provide suitable food quality.
• Gas sensors are included in e-nose.
• E-nose and e-mucosa systems coupled with NIR, e-tongue, and machine vision are novel methods.

A crucial aspect of drysing process is monitoring of product moisture content, nutritional value, and sensorial characteristics. This viewpoint paper considers the challenges and the opportunities in application of electronic nose and electronic mucosa as innovative instruments in drying technology in order to improve the final food quality. Electronic nose is reliable and easy to use tool in actual drying conditions. Nonetheless, the electronic mucosa, imitates nasal chromatograph effect, can provide more useful information leading to higher level of recognition than the existing electronic nose systems. Perspectives and potential employment of such tools are discussed as well.