By J. Scott Angle, jangle@ufl.edu, @IFAS_VP
Our job at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) is to help you make money. Since HLB is the biggest threat to your bottom line, it’s at the top of our research agenda.
We continue to seek scientific solutions to anything else that threatens your livelihood — other diseases, pests, nutrition challenges and more. In addition to reducing production costs, we innovate ways to increase your revenue. We see potential, for example, in selling citrus as a flavor and fragrance to customers who don’t drink orange juice.
MARKETS BEYOND JUICE
UF/IFAS flavor chemist Yu Wang focuses her work at the Citrus Research and Education Center on flavor improvements in HLB-tolerant varieties, but she doesn’t stop there. She sees consumer demand for citrus flavor and fragrance in everything from cocktails to candles as an opportunity to tilt the economics of HLB-era citrus in your favor. Creating value-added uses for citrus beyond juice, such as ingredients for flavors, fragrances and nutraceuticals, can open new markets as we work toward long-term HLB solutions.
She’s doing it through the old-fashioned land-grant approach of working with industry. Wang is discussing potential collaborations with companies along or near U.S. 98 in the Lakeland area, which turns out to be a bit of an industrial flavor corridor. She aims to advance her work on your behalf through cooperation with companies such as ADM, DSM-Firmenich, Takasago, Kerry, Givaudan, Treatt and FlavorChem.
AN OUTSTANDING TOUR
That’s why I set up a recent visit to the citrus headquarters of a global leader in flavor innovation earlier this year and asked Wang to join me. The IFF Citrus Innovation Center set up shop in Lakeland in April.
It was a dazzling tour of immaculate labs, innovative products and a consumer-focused approach to citrus. Our IFF hosts seated us in a circular IMAX-like room of sensory immersion. Projections on the wall put us in a lounge, citrus scents were pumped into the room, and a UF/IFAS-trained scientist served us citrus-flavored mocktails he created.
APPLYING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The producer will always be our primary focus. At the same time, we need to make sure that consumers want what you have to sell.
Wang is pursuing areas of research of high interest to companies like IFF, such as personalized flavor profiles. She proposes using artificial intelligence (AI) and sensory data to design flavors and food experiences tailored to different regions, demographics or health needs.
Think, for example, of how flavor preferences might differ between Asian and North American consumers. Or how creating specific flavor systems could enhance appetite and nutrient intake for cancer patients. Or how we might develop flavor experiences appealing to Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers.
Wang wants to use AI tools to analyze large datasets to understand these preferences combined with human studies to help interpret biological and emotional aspects of flavor perception.
All of this will be on the agenda of Wang’s fourth International Flavor Summit March 16–18 in Orlando. It’s an outreach effort aimed at her broader goal of building a world-leading flavor program at UF/IFAS that promotes Florida-based products globally.
The analytical and AI-based tools Wang is developing for citrus flavor characterization can be applied to UF/IFAS citrus breeding programs to help advance toward this goal.
J. Scott Angle is the University of Florida’s senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of UF/IFAS.
Share this Post