German company Metabolomic Discoveries has launched a new research service to help identify the different components that make up flavour and taste that it hopes could revolutionise the breeding, marketing and retailing of fresh fruit and vegetable varieties.
Flavour Profiler is an objective flavour analysis and can be standardised to screen different products and processes.
Nicolas Schauer, chief executive at the Potsdam analytical research service provider explains: “To date, most flavour analysis is done through sensory profiling by experts or consumers. However, this does not provide a complete picture. In contrast, the Flavour Profiler will analyse objectively all flavour components of the product. This is done through mass spectrometry-based metabolite profiling and fingerprinting. The Flavour Profiler is our approach to make flavour more objective and to identify the underlying chemical basis. A metabolomics-based flavour analysis has the advantage that, unlike sensory profiling, it can measure all the relevant taste and aroma compounds in the product.”
Schauer believes the new tool can benefit the whole supply chain, starting with new variety development at the breeding stage. This is an area that hitherto has had little understanding of flavour and the underlying mechanisms at work, according to Schauer. “In breeding and research our tool allows the identification of flavour variation in breeding programmes,” he says. “We link this variation to sensory profiles and determine the most important compounds and their concentrations, potentially also targeting different market segments. This information goes directly into breeding for novel varieties. Here we hope to have developed a powerful tool to breed for better flavour in fruit and vegetables.”
The flavour analysis is also a tool to screen products and production processes for potential changes in flavour, allowing growers to monitor the taste quality of their produce and help them demonstrate and prove this quality to their customers. “If retailers have certain parameters, here we have an objective way to benchmark,” said Schauer. “For marketing this is a great tool to demonstrate that you have good flavour and you can also produce for specific flavour segments and market them as such.”
The profiler allows for the analysis of all known and unknown compounds in a product. Schauer and his team have developed a way to link this to sensorial information. “It is a combination of analytical tools and bioinformatics plus a lot of knowledge of biology, and food and plant chemistry,” he said.
Looking at apples as an example, Metabolomic Discoveries divides consumers into four groups with a preference for a sweet, hard, floury aroma; a sweet, soft, flowery aroma; an acidic hard earthy aroma; and an acidic, soft, earthy aroma. “Flavour Profiler enables varieties to be profiled and grouped to make a brand which delivers constant quality year round with distinct flavours the different groups like,” explained Schauer. “These consumers then don’t need to worry about variation due to origin or environment.”
The substances Flavour Profiler covers for taste include sugars, organic acids, amino acids, umani compounds and bitter compounds. For aroma the platform can determine an enormous range including aldehydes, aromatics, ketones and esters, among others. -
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