Flavor Ingredient Sustainability and Biotechnology

Current flavor productionFlavor production methods (predominantly natural extraction and chemical synthesis) cannot be relied upon to meet the production needs of such a rapidly growing population. There is also an increasing consumer desire for natural food products. Natural products meet consumer quality expectations but are often prohibitively priced and unsustainable due to agriculture variations and damaging farming practices. Chemically synthesized flavor ingredients are cheap, but they do not meet consumer expectations due to their use of non-renewable resources and potential environmental pollution. Flavor biotechnologyFlavor biotechnology, or using whole or partial living organisms to create flavor ingredients, is a promising alternative to natural extraction and chemical synthesis; it offers product isomer specificity, cost advantages, and lower environmental pollution. In fact, the biotech flavors could be labeled natural in both the EU and United States. Flavor biotechnologyFlavor biotechnology research is growing in popularity in the following areas: using intact microbial cells to produce flavor chemicals or using isolated enzymes, whole plants, plant cells and tissue cultures, thermal processes, agro-industrial waste, or algae for flavor productionFlavor production. Enzymatic or microbial biotechnology methods have been adopted to produce more than 100 commercial flavor molecules. Even so, there is much to be learned involving cell and metabolic pathways in addition to solutions for feasibility issues like product cytotoxicity and difficult downstream purification. In the future, there will likely be advances in bio-aroma technology, knowledge, interest, and cost-competitiveness, leading to an overall increased market share.