This week you will get to know how the most pleasant molecules can be produced biotechnologically. These molecules are the “Bioflavours”, natural aroma molecules with a smell of vanilla, apple, peach or other flavour types.

Have you ever thought about how the flavour comes into your foods and drinks?

Even if the flavour industry is relatively unknown to most of the consumers, it is a relatively important part of the food industry, as the annual sales in 2017 were 13 billion euros. The largest international acting companies in the so called flavour and fragrance industry are the European companies Givaudan and Firmenich from Switzerland as number 1and 2, and the German company Symrise. Despite the fact that all of them are active in the biotechnological production of flavours, as can be seen in the patents filed by them in recent years, none of them agreed to give a presentation of their activities for this MOOC. But there were a couple of other companies _Solvay, Axxence and Isobionics, who will present their successful biotechnical activities in this unit.

In this module you will learn that the chemical structures of these flavour molecules are very diverse, but they all have in common that they have a relatively low molecular weight.

The reason why Biotechnology can compete in the production of these relatively simple molecules is caused by the legislation, and so we will also look at the legal framework in Europe and the US.

During this week, we will look at processes for very important flavour chemicals like vanillin, lactones, aldehydes, alcohols and carboxylic acids, but also on some speciality molecules, which are produced in smaller volumes but are nevertheless important.

We will see that the processes are either microbial fermentations or enzymatic biotransformations.

After this week you will know a number of biotechnological processes for the production of Bioflavours and will be able to develop such processes on your own.