{"id":168,"date":"2020-06-28T22:36:25","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T03:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/?p=168"},"modified":"2020-06-28T22:36:25","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T03:36:25","slug":"a-gold-tongue-helps-to-taste-the-flavor-of-maple-syrup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/applications\/a-gold-tongue-helps-to-taste-the-flavor-of-maple-syrup\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u201cGold Tongue\u201d Helps to Taste the Flavor of Maple Syrup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"644\" src=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/A-\u201cGold-Tongue\u201d-Helps-to-Taste-the-Flavor-of-Maple-Syrup-1-1024x644.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-169\" srcset=\"\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/A-\u201cGold-Tongue\u201d-Helps-to-Taste-the-Flavor-of-Maple-Syrup-1-1024x644.jpg 1024w, \/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/A-\u201cGold-Tongue\u201d-Helps-to-Taste-the-Flavor-of-Maple-Syrup-1-300x189.jpg 300w, \/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/A-\u201cGold-Tongue\u201d-Helps-to-Taste-the-Flavor-of-Maple-Syrup-1-768x483.jpg 768w, \/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/A-\u201cGold-Tongue\u201d-Helps-to-Taste-the-Flavor-of-Maple-Syrup-1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Maple syrup is\nmade from the sap of <em>Acer saccharum<\/em> (sugar maple trees). Canada&#8217;s sugar\nmaple tree has very high sugar content. Maple syrup is one of the most famous\nspecialties in Canada as well as one of the important economic sources of\nCanada. It can be said that maple syrup is the liquid gold of Quebec. It is\nunderstood that the flavor of maple syrup will be affected by the growth area,\nweather, harvest time, production technology and storage methods, and other\nfactors. Some of the resulting high-quality syrup will eventually be bottled\nand sold on supermarket shelves. However, others that are not so delicious are\noften sold to food companies, which use them as natural sweeteners in their\nproducts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just as the\ncharacteristics of the wine are determined by &#8220;soil&#8221;, i.e. the unique\naspects of the vineyard, such as temperature, soil, land slope, rainfall. The\nmaple syrups are determined by many factors too, making each farm have their\nown special flavor maple syrups. The United States and Canada have a grading\nsystem that helps consumers distinguish different syrup according to the\nstrength of the taste. The maple syrup collected at the beginning of the\nharvest season is lighter in color and has a more subtle taste than the darker\nand stronger taste syrup at the end of the harvest season. To help them grade their\nproducts and classify the syrup more quickly, scientists at the University of\nMontreal in Canada have invented an &#8220;artificial gold tongue&#8221;. This is\na colorimetric test that detects color changes to show the taste of maple syrup\nsamples. The result can be seen with the naked eye in just a few seconds, which\nis very useful to the producer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Quebec\nmaple syrup manufacturers approached us in 2017 to help develop a test that can\nidentify maple syrup with different flavors,&#8221; explained Jean-Fran\u00e7ois\nMasson, a chemistry professor at the University of Montreal in Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Professor Marson&#8217;s team specializes in the use of gold nanomaterials and realized that they could use the noble metal nanoparticles for color testing for Quebec manufacturers. &#8220;Gold is no longer a shiny yellow (in this size scale), but a crimson,&#8221; he told everyone. &#8220;the presence of molecules with different flavors leads to the aggregation of gold nanoparticles, leading to the fact that the color turns dark blue.&#8221; In fact, the test consists of gold nanoparticles suspended in water. Usually, the solution is red and it keeps red when a few drops of consumer-grade maple syrup are added. However, if it is a low-quality syrup, its organic molecular combination will aggregate the nanoparticles and turn the solution blue in 10 seconds. As you can see, the working principle of this test is very similar to the pH or chlorine test in the swimming pool. Professor Marson explained that the team used gold because only a very small amount of gold (about 1\/1000000 grams) was needed for testing. In addition, the color change of the material can be easily detected by a simple spectrophotometer, and gold reacts well with some molecules in maple syrup. He hopes the test could benefit manufacturers in many ways. This &#8220;gold tongue&#8221; can help identify maple syrup and help trained technicians assess the appropriate grade of 300,000 barrels of maple syrup produced annually in Quebec, so the industry may benefit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Reference:<br>Forest, S., Th\u00e9or\u00eat, T., Coutu, J., &amp; Masson, J. F. (2020). A high-throughput plasmonic tongue using an aggregation assay and nonspecific interactions: classification of taste profiles in maple syrup. <em>Analytical Methods<\/em>, 12(19), 2460-2468. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maple syrup is made from the sap of Acer saccharum (sugar maple trees). Canada&#8217;s sugar maple tree has very high<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[8,43],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-applications","tag-gold-nanoparticles","tag-maple-syrup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cd-bioparticles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}