Flavor and Fragrance
R&D: Collecting Tastes and Scents Around
the World
Corinne Marasco
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Want to travel the world, sample exotic fruits
and flavors, rise above the canopy of a rain forest
in a hot air balloon, and explore the flora and
fauna in remote locations? Welcome to the world
of flavor and fragrance R&D, as introduced
by Jeffrey Peppet and Justin Sperry from Givaudan
at the recent American Chemical Society (ACS)
National Meeting in Orlando. Peppet and Sperry
described how research teams from Givaudan explored
the incredible bio-diversity on foot and by hovering
above the forest canopy in a large hot air balloon,
and evaluated and collected aromas in the field.
The fragrance and flavor industry is quite large.
According to a March 2001 report from The
Freedonia Group, "Worldwide demand for
flavors and fragrances
is expected to exceed
$18 billion by 2004, driven by strong sales in
developing regions, especially Asia and Latin
America." The total fragrance and flavor
market in 2001 was about $11.0 billion US, as
estimated by Leffingwell
& Associates, an industry information
services provider.
Givaudan is one of the oldest and largest flavor
and fragrance houses in the world, with annual
sales of over CHF 2.4 billion (approximately $1.6
billion US) in 2000. Givaudan has operations in
over 40 countries and opened a new R&D center
in late 2000, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, involving
the collaborative efforts of over 500 people.
Givaudan is the second largest company in the
fragrance and flavor industry, behind International
Flavors & Fragrances (IFF).
Givaudan's TasteTrek program involves the
exploration and capture of food and flavors from
various parts of the world by scientists to make
additive products that mimic what is found naturally
in the field. Their customers can then incorporate
these flavors for use in commercial food and beverage
development.
There are two sides to the TasteTrek program:
exploration, which is going mainly into unexplored
rain forests in search of novel ingredients in
the biorich flora and fauna; and culinary, where
scientists visit countries around the world, such
as Korea and Vietnam, and capturing the aromas
and flavors that emanate from the local cuisines.
Exploring the Rain Forest
Givaudan has sponsored two large-scale missions
to Africa, first to Gabon (1999) and then to Madagascar
(2001). The objective of these trips was to discover
new botanicals that will produce flavors with
potential market value. It could be a fruit or
a flower, come from the canopy of the rain forest,
the under story, the bark of a tree, a pod, or
a root. Scientists have found many interesting
ingredients from all different kinds of sources.
Scientists may also find new ingredients to enhance
or improve existing flavors. You may find something
within one of the samples that you can recreate
that aroma or flavor but also use pieces of that
somewhere else. For example, extracts identified
that produce flavor enhancement from a fruit in
West Africa have been used successfully to the
same for a broccoli flavor, strawberry flavor,
and shitake mushroom flavor.
Another goal is to identify new flavor molecules.
Givaudan's fragrance ingredient group has a yearly
objective to discover promising new and commercializable
molecules. This allows them to expand the selection
of materials available to flavor chemists by smelling
and tasting the new discoveries. (Testing new
recipes is clearly one of the best perks of the
job!)
Traveling to Gabon and Madagascar are miracles
of logistics because of the intense planning required
to get the necessary equipment over to a remote
location. The trip to Madagascar required shipping
three containers of equipment and took five months
to get everything into the camp. These are extremely
remote locations to investigate since they have
never before been explored as a scientific expedition
for flavors or fragrances. The scientists worked
in collaboration with a rain forest preservation
group that works mainly to teach the local people
how to use the forest and regrow the forest in
a sustainable fashion. They also collaborated
with botanists willing to climb the trees to bring
back samples.
The trees in the rain forest are oftentimes 50
or more meters high and possess some really interesting
botanicals at the top which you can't explore
unless you have a way to get up there, such as
a helium balloon or in a raft suspended from a
hot air balloon. This requires taking off before
sunrise, because the hot air currents make cruising
over the forest canopy possible until about 7
a.m.
In addition to investigating the rain forest
and canopy, scientists also visit local markets
and villages for ingredients and interview local
people to look at how they combine ingredients
and what types of cooking processes they use.
In Gabon, on the west coast of Africa, scientists
collected over 200 samples of items, most of which
were tropical fruits. Scientists also collected
over 140 headspace samples and 50 extracts that
were sent back to Switzerland for analysis there.
Headspace sampling is the fastest and cleanest
method for analyzing volatile organic compounds.
In this case, the goal is to capture the aroma
molecules that are emanating from a sample into
a trap.
Madagascar is exceptionally rich in biodiversity
and has the highest rate of endemic species in
the world. The trip focused on the Masoala peninsula,
which largely consists of a national forest reserve,
one of the only remaining primary forests left
in the country. (Gabon and Madagascar are experiencing
a very high rate of deforestation.) Working in
collaboration with scientists from other Givaudan
locations and local botanists, the goal was to
search for new aromas and tastes along the coast,
in and on top of the coastal forest and throughout
the mountainous forest. The teams were up by 4:00
a.m. as the sun rises before 5:00 a.m. and set
off in the balloon to work before the weather
gets too hot. In two trips to Madagascar, scientists
collected 120 headspace samples resulting in 40
being able to be reconstituted.
Culinary Focus
There is a great demand for authenticity in cooking
due to the availability of information via the
Internet, in the US with the availability of products
in grocery stores, the expansion of available
ingredients for cooking, and interest in the cuisines
of other countries and cultures. It's hard to
recreate a Vietnamese dish in a location such
as Cincinnati even if you have the recipe. So
Givaudan scientists visited local restaurants
and worked with local chefs and culinary schools
to sample authentically prepared dishes. Using
the same technology used in the rain forest, they
captured the aromas and tastes to recreate them
for use in the manufacturing of prepackaged food
and ingredients.
Givaudan also recently convened the Givaudan
Chefs Council, a diverse team of culinary experts
who will serve as an extension of Givaudan's culinary
staff. This program is designed to focus on culinary
trends, stimulate creativity and enhance innovation
in the development of new culinary concepts. The
Givaudan Chef's Council is comprised of a rotating
panel of Chefs from Europe and the United States,
from prominent restaurants as well as internationally
renowned culinary schools, including the Culinary
Institute of America (CIA).
Analytical Techniques
The goal is to recreate an authentic aroma. The
challenge in meeting that goal is being able to
capture the volatile molecules and bring the information
back to the lab in order to recreate the flavors
found.
There are three steps to recreating an aroma.
The first step involves an aroma capture technique
to collect the volatile compounds. The aroma reconstitution
stage allows scientists to recombine those chemicals
and put them into a final composition. The flavor
development stage is where creation chemists adapt
the flavor to go into various applications.
There are two headspace techniques that were
used in the rain forest. One is the Thermal Desorption
Device aroma trap, which collects the aroma in
small tubes; the device is than attached to a
gas chromatograph (GC) for separation and analysis.
The drawback to this technique is you have one
shot to get the sample properly separated for
analysis so a couple of samples of each sample
are needed for insurance.
Another complementary technique used involves
a thermal desorption microtrap. This technique
serves as a pre-concentrator to give repetitive
injections allowing more ability to sample a given
headspace vial.
Once the aroma impact compounds are identified,
a list of components in the sample is generated.
This is often determined spectrally with IR or
with mass spectrometry.
Givaudan has developed proprietary technologies
such as the Virtual Aroma Synthesizer (VAS),
which allows aromas to be created and blended
in real time according to exact customer specifications.
While flavor creation has come a long way, challenges
remain. Invisible compounds that are detected
by the human nose but not by analytical techniques
cannot be reproduced. In addition, there are non-GRAS
(Generally Recognized As Safe) compounds, which
may have some market value but need approval.
The benefits, however, are meeting consumer desire
for new taste sensations; authenticity in taste;
and to respond to a global appeal for international
cuisines.
Corinne Marasco is Content Manager of JobSpectrum.
Related Information
Givaudan sponsors the Ernest Guenther Award in
the Chemistry of Natural Products, which is administered
by the American Chemical Society. The purpose
is to recognize and encourage outstanding achievements
in analysis, structure elucidation, and chemical
synthesis of natural products. For more information
about the Guenther Award, visit the ACS
National Awards Web site.
The ACS Education Division has developed a series
of Chemical Careers in Brief to provide students
with information necessary to make sound career
decisions, and to give counselors a tool to assist
students in the career-planning process. Read
about working in the field of Food
and Flavor Chemistry.
The ACS Division
of Agricultural and Food Science is dedicated
to encouraging the advancement and understanding
of agricultural and food chemistry; and to promoting
scientific interest and inquiry in agricultural
and food chemistry.
The Society
of Flavor Chemists (SFC) and the
Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) are
dedicated to the training of flavorists (flavor
chemists). SFC has designed a rigorous training
process for flavorists and IFT has approved 50
schools with food science programs.
Some well-known food science programs are located
at:
- Cornell
University
- Rutgers-The
State University of New Jersey
- Iowa State
University
- Michigan
State University
- University
of California-Davis
- University
of Minnesota
- University
of Wisconsin-Madison
Food scientists also work for the government
at the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) or US
Department of Agriculture (USDA).
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