Grethe Hyldig Ph.D. - WEFTA Award winner of 2024

Grethe Hyldig, is Senior Researcher in Sensory Science and the leader of the sensory group at the National Food Institute, in the Research Group for Bioactives – Analysis and Application at the Technical University of Denmark.

In 1996 she came to the National Institute of Aquatic Resources (DTU Aqua) where she established a group that worked with sustainable and innovative use of traditional and alternative fish species, and the preservation of quality from catch to consumer, and has made sensory analysis an important part of this work. The sensory group, she has formed and supervised, has an extensive knowledge and experience within the area of sensory quality of seafood. The group works with consumer preferences and sensory quality. important parts of the work are development of methods for evaluating eating quality and shelf life for predicting quality and shelf life under known storage conditions. Grethe is one of the core researchers in the development and validation of the Quality Index Method (QIM) schemes internationally. She gives national and international QIM courses, both for implementation and use of QIM and for developing new schemes at all academic levels. The work includes acceptance and preference tests, combined with focus groups and surveys to describe consumers' perception of quality, information requests and motive for the purchases. When the group moved to DTU Food in 2010 the work was extended to include seaweed, meat, vegetables, beer and other commodities.

Grethe has also been an important participant in the Establishment of a Danish sensory research network - SensNet-that was founded in a desire to develop and expand the sensory research, education and innovation at the three food Universities, namely the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University and the Danish Technical University at a national and international level. The work of SensNet is now continued in the Danish Sensory Society under the Association of Danish Engineers. In 2014 she was the head of the organising committee of the Sixth European Conference on Sensory and Consumer Research in Copenhagen. She has also been the president of the Nordic-Baltic Committee on Food Analysis and is still a member of the sensory group.

The eating quality plays a very important role both when focus is on health and value of “blue” ingredients and seafood. Through many projects studies have investigated the influence of different treatments, processes and natural changes on the sensory quality of seafood and ingredients processed from the production of seafood. Grethe Hyldig presentation will summarize the sensory knowledge obtained through the past 20+ years seafood projects.