The Chemical Interactions Underlying Tomato Flavor Preferences

Abstract

Although human perception of food flavors involves integration of multiple sensory inputs, the most salient sensations are taste and olfaction. Ortho- and retronasal olfaction are particularly crucial to flavor because they provide the qualitative diversity so important to identify safe versus dangerous foods. Historically, flavor research has prioritized aroma volatiles present at levels exceeding the orthonasally measured odor threshold, ignoring the variation in the rate at which odor intensities grow above threshold. Furthermore, the chemical composition of a food in itself tells us very little about whether or not that food will be liked. Clearly, alternative approaches are needed to elucidate flavor chemistry. Here we use targeted metabolomics and natural variation in flavor-associated sugars, acids, and aroma volatiles to evaluate the chemistry of tomato fruits, creating a predictive and testable model of liking. This nontraditional approach provides novel insights into flavor chemistry, the interactions between taste and retronasal olfaction, and a paradigm for enhancing liking of natural products. Some of the most abundant volatiles do not contribute to consumer liking, whereas other less abundant ones do. Aroma volatiles make contributions to perceived sweetness independent of sugar concentration, suggesting a novel way to increase perception of sweetness without adding sugar.

Chilling-induced tomato flavor loss is associated with altered volatile synthesis and transient changes in DNA methylation

“…Taste panels consisted of 76 persons. Panelists rated overall liking of chilled and unchilled Ailsa Craig tomatoes using a hedonic general labeled magnitude scale, as described previously (3). Chilled tomatoes were less liked than unchilled tomatoes when panelists' liking scores were compared as matched pairs using a one-tailed t test, sign test, or Wilcoxon signed rank test.…”

Role of an esterase in flavor volatile variation within the tomato clade

“…We previously screened a large, chemically diverse population of heirloom tomato varieties, permitting us to correlate the concentrations of flavor-associated chemicals with consumer liking (16). Correlation of consumerliking scores with content of individual acetate esters as well as total acetate esters as a percentage of total volatiles indicated a significant negative correlation value (Table S1).…”

“…Although this method has value, recent work has shown that the reality of taste preference is far more complex as interactions between volatiles and other flavor-associated chemicals influence perception. Consumer preference panels conducted with a large, diverse set of tomato varieties identified a set of volatiles that are positively or negatively correlated with preferences (16).…”

Quantification of the gene expression of bell peppers (Capsicum annuum) ripening gene(s) using real -time PCR

“…The increase of the expression of RIN gene induces the ripening process of the fruits (Tieman et al, 2012). In the case of the EXP1 gene of the bell pepper, it had an 82.73% similarity to the Arabidopsis".…”