A career in consumer and sensory science

Christina Bava works in the consumer and sensory science team at Plant & Food Research in Mt Albert. Here, she describes a variety of aspects of her work that she finds really rewarding.

Teaching points

• Students can find out more about the work of a consumer and sensory scientist in the article, Sensory scientists.

• Find out more about Christina’s career pathway.

Transcript

Christina Bava (Plant & Food Research)
We get so much variety working in the Sensory and Consumer Science team, especially here at Plant & Food Research, where we have got work going on with kiwifruit and apples and berryfruit and apricots and all sorts of fruit varieties. We've also had some work coming through with the purple heart potatoes, so we get to talk to consumers about a really broad spectrum of fruit and vegetables.

It’s a really rewarding process when you have been talking to the project managers, trying to identify what it is about a product that they are interested in and what they want to hear from consumers. So to be involved in the development of questionnaires and interview guidelines that help tease out those really important questions from consumers and talk to a group of people and see their faces light up when you provide them with an image of a new fruit variety that they may see available in the supermarket soon.