Ed Crisostomo / The Press-Enterprise
Flavourist Michelle King smells a fruit at the
Citrus Variety Collection grove during the
grove tour with fruit tasting and fruit collection
during Day 2 of Givaudan's 2009 TasteTrek.


http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_flavors08.2a000af.html
Looking for a lemon 'wow' -- international flavorists converge on UCR citrus groves

03:48 PM PDT on Monday, March 9, 2009
By SEAN NEALON
The Press-Enterprise

RIVERSIDE - Standing in the sandy soil of a UC Riverside agricultural field, Michelle King dug her fingernail into the peel of an SRA 92 clementine mandarin and put it to her nose for several seconds. She detected sweet tangerine, with a slightly floral scent.

Next, King put a piece of the mandarin with Moroccan origins in her mouth and began her three-phase taste test. Front notes: sweet honey flavor. Middle notes: really sweet orange. Finish: brown sugar.

"I think that would make an awesome high-proof vodka, carbonated soft drink, fruit snack or chewing gum flavor," said King, who spent four years taking smell and taste tests at Givaudan, a Swiss flavor- and fragrance-producing company, before becoming a flavorist.

King and a team of nine from Givaudan spent three days at UCR in January. They tasted and smelled fruit from more than 50 trees in the citrus variety collection. Then in a university lab, inspired by the fruit, they created flavors that they believed would interest food and beverage companies.

"If they just say it tastes like a lemon, I didn't do my job," said King, who thinks of herself as part chemist, part artist. "I'm looking for a lemon 'wow.' "

Givaudan and the university benefit from the unique partnership.



Givaudan officials, who said citrus is the leading beverage flavor category in the world, get access to one of the most diverse collections of citrus in the world. Past visits have yielded eight natural flavors. Several food and beverage companies are interested in the flavors and are planning visits to UCR later this year.

Access to information collected by Givaudan can help university citrus researchers develop new citrus varieties and understand citrus diseases. Givaudan's visit also draws attention to the 99-year-old citrus variety collection and spurred the company to donate to the endowment that aims to preserve the trees.

A Worldwide Resource

The citrus variety collection sits on 25 acres on the western side of campus, adjacent to Highway 60, and includes 1,019 varieties of trees. It draws researchers from UCR and around the world.

The collection helped researchers develop new citrus varieties and solve Tristeza disease, which devastated the California citrus industry starting in the 1930s. Now, it's a resource for researchers studying Asian citrus psyllid, an insect that threatens the citrus industry worldwide.

The arrangement with Givaudan, which involves no money, is the first formal agreement allowing a private company access to the citrus variety collection, said Tracy Kahn, who oversees the collection and is a lecturer in the biology department.

Givaudan, which has offices on five continents, employs about 180 of an estimated 600 flavorists in the world, company officials said.


Ed Crisostomo / The Press-Enterprise
David Karp and Jim Hassel, left, react after a taste test at the citrus
variety collection at UC Riverside that draws visitors from around
the world. It sits on 25 acres on the western side of campus and
has 1,019 tree varieties.

Those flavorists have made "TasteTreks" everywhere from China where they sampled a variety of green tea called longjing, to the rain forest in Madagascar in search of new flavors, molecules and ingredients.

They made their first trek to UCR in 2006. They have returned each year since and developed eight orange flavor profiles based on UCR fruit. Based on these profiles, Givaudan can create products ranging from carbonated drinks to candy and provide them to food and beverage company officials.

Later this year, four food and beverage companies will visit UCR to gather more information about the citrus that inspired the Givaudan flavors, said Jeff Peppet, a company spokesman. One or two companies have visited in the past, he said.

Peppet declined to name the companies because Givaudan has confidentially agreements with its customers. The agreements are necessary because Givaudan works with many food and beverage companies that compete against each other, he said.

Tasting and Smelling

In the UCR field last month, Givaudan and UCR officials spent seven hours walking between dozens of rows of orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit trees, with fruit ranging in size from a green pea to a human head.


Flavorists Ben Kranen, and Michelle King prepare samples collected
from a tour of the citrus variety collection at UCR.

Kahn, wearing an orange-slice pin on her jacket, led the way, avoiding mud patches, irrigation hoses and rotten fruit. Carrying a map and list of pre-selected trees, she arrived at each tree, unfolded her 4-inch orange-cutting knife, picked a piece of fruit and cut pieces in the shape of pie slices.

Eric Flamme, a Givaudan scientist, read off the number that corresponded to each tree. Givaudan flavorists wrote it down along with comments about the appearance and taste of the fruit.

The flavorists also conversed among themselves about smells and tastes they detected.

Smells included coriander, pine, ladies bathroom rose, Juicy Fruit gum and crushed lightening bugs.

Tastes included esters, acetate, lime Lifesavers and shoe polish.

"It's always this oral, cool mystery of what you're about to experience," King said.

Between tastings, Dawn Streich, Givaudan's global citrus product manager, handed out Handi Wipes and saltines.

Lab Inspiration

Givaudan flavorists selected 14 lemons and limes that they sampled in the field to analyze over two days in a conference room-turned-lab in UCR's Batchelor Hall.

They cut and juiced the fruit, funneled the juice into a glass bottle about the size of prescription pill container and attached the bottle to a mini virtual-aroma synthesizer.

The synthesizer -- essentially a portable lab that fits inside a gray plastic suitcase the size of a briefcase -- contains plastic tubes, air filters, pumps and 29 tubes with aromas associated with lemon. The aromas -- including sulfur, lemon zesty, pine, orange juice and alcoholic -- were inspired by a past trip to UCR.

Ben Kranen, a flavorist who works in Givaudan's Netherlands office, called the synthesizer, which Givaudan developed, a "scientific blender of smells."

The synthesizer attaches to a laptop computer, which has separate controls similar to a volume meter for each of the 29 aromas. After smelling the fresh fruit juice, the flavorist manipulates the flavor profiles to create a flavor inspired by the juice aroma.

The flavorists don't necessarily want to replicate the aroma. For example, if a fruit has a strong sulfur taste, they may try to eliminate that while preserving desirable characteristics.

The portable synthesizer allows flavorists to work with the fruit when it's fresh and just off the tree. Once a flavor profile is saved in the computer, flavorists can further tinker with it at Givaudan labs throughout the world.

"When you're creating a flavor it's not a photograph," Streich said. "It's like an artists' rendition of what they see."

Reach Sean Nealon at 951-368-9458 or snealon@PE.com

UC Riverside's citrus variety collection draws people from all over the world interested in developing new flavors and combating diseases that affect citrus crops:

Size

25 acres

Trees

1,019 varieties

IN existence

99 years