Correlation analysis between appearance quality and sensory quality of Henan flue-cured tobacco
Taking a complete set of grading national standard samples of Henan flue-cured tobacco duplicated from the national standards as experimental material, the appearance and sensory qualities of each grade sample were quantitatively evaluated according to National Tobacco Grading Standard (GB 2635—1992). A statistical analysis was conducted to examine whether the data had any value for reference; basing on that, the correlations among the indexes were investigated with simple correlation analysis and canonical correlation analysis. The results showed that the 42 selected samples varied widely in appearance quality, their sensory evaluation results agreed with normal distribution, which were of great reference value. The results of simple correlation analysis indicated that, of the appearance characteristics, color, maturity, oil, chromaticity and total appearance score were extremely significantly positively correlated to the following sensory characteristics, i.e., aroma quality, aroma intensity, concentration, impact, offensive odor, irritation, aftertaste, combustibility, ash color and total sensory score. The results of canonical correlation analysis were basically consistent with those of simple correlation analysis. The relationships between appearance quality and sensory quality could be summarized as the interrelationships between the two sets of canonical variables, which had the canonical correlation coefficients of 0.9479** and 0.8619**, respectively.