The Brazilian agricultural research agency Embrapa has invented an “electronic tongue” to taste and control the quality of coffee and other beverages. A small device has polymer conductors that can identify five flavors and the amount of salt in water at a concentration a thousand times beyond what the human tongue can discern.

The so-called “cyber-tongue”, created to improve the speed, precision and cost effectiveness of assessing and classifying coffees, will be on the Brazilian market next year.

But it will not replace human tasters, assures João Naime, an Embrapa technology researcher in Sao Carlos, 240 km from Sao Paulo, where the project was developed.

“The human factor will remain indispensable” for determining which is the better product for the taste of different groups of people and to establish comparisons, he told Tierramérica.