Synergy Flavours has launched an educational program – Citrusology – to inspire F&B manufacturers eager to tap into consumers’ piqued interest in citrus. 

The program includes a series of educational webinars to help manufacturers explore flavor nuances across regions and citrus varieties. 

Speaking to FoodIngredientsFirst, Vicky Berry, European business development manager at Synergy Flavours, says: “Our program is a collaborative tool that is designed to help us have more meaningful citrus conversations with our customers to better understand their requirements.”

Provenance grows
Taking a scientific approach to flavor creation means that Synergy can provide solutions that not only taste great, but are also true to the original citrus flavor, she notes. 

“When you combine this with our Italian expertise and our understanding of citrus provenance, we’re able to deliver flavors that are authentic and meet all of the requirements of manufacturers across a range of product applications.”

With Citrusology, Synergy is helping customers by enabling provenance declarations through named source ingredients, with new Italian extracts, for example. 

“We need to understand what our customers want and what the market wants and anticipate what’s coming next. We have seen citrus evolving and are seeing more demand for different citrus fruits like pink grapefruit, mandarin and yuzu,” Berry explains. 

“It’s important to understand what our customers want to achieve. Are they looking for provenance, or are they looking for a particular profile? Do they want a juicy orange to work in a soft drink, or are they looking for a more grown-up profile like mandarin, which has more floral notes?”

While provenance is a growing trend for consumers, manufacturers have many choices and considerations for creating a provenance-inspired citrus product, Berry outlines. 

“In some markets and for some consumers, using named source materials is the preference. However, there are supply considerations that need to be taken into account.”

Breaking down profiles
Citrus flavors have always been a customer favorite across categories, from dairy products, such as ice creams and yogurts, to baked goods and beverages. 

“They can offer a sense of nostalgia with the relatable lemon and orange profiles, while also offering a sense of adventure and uniqueness with new varieties and regions proving to be popular,” says Berry. 

Synergy draws on its experience in developing citrus profiles using various extraction methods and different techniques to understand profiles and guide flavor creation. 

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) coupled with flame ionization detection is used to analyze essential oils and orange extracts to identify the key flavor compounds in different varieties of orange, for example.

Advancing in flavors 
Through the analysis of different orange varietals and types, Synergy identified compounds that make each profile unique.

For example, the analysis showed that a high concentration of a flavor compound called Sinensal can contribute to juicy notes. In contrast, the flavor compounds Dimethyl anthranilate and gamma-Terpinene are likely to be responsible for characteristic floral and woody notes. 

Using these insights, Synergy can create citrus flavor profiles to inspire manufacturer’s citrus product development projects. Examples include:

• Blood orange with orange, juicy and fruit notes.
• A mandarin flavor with more predominant floral notes.
• A Floridian orange with peely notes.

“We use sensory evaluations by an expert panel to help convey the flavor differences to our customers,” says Phil Ashman, Synergy UK flavorist. 

“Sensory analysis ensures orange profiles discriminate well in the perceived flavor and mirror the data obtained from the analysis. Principal components regression analysis can be applied to simplify the complexity of the sensory data and retain trends and patterns among the flavor profiles and their flavor characteristics.”

The sensory data allows customers to choose between various citrus flavors and identify the type of orange profile they are looking for. 

A core flavor
Citrus has long been a core and on-trend flavor. 

“Whether it be through a natural flavor or the named provenance material, our approach and our heritage help our customers deliver the best tasting citrus products,” explains Berry. 

Synergy unveiled its Italian provenance citrus range earlier this month, which taps into consumer demand for premiumization and increases product transparency. 

The flavors include Calabrian lemon, Italian blood orange, Italian bergamot, Sicilian blood orange, Sicilian mandarin, Sicilian lemon and Sicilian chinotto. 

The company’s recent collaboration with PureCircle and Skinny Tonics also featured flavors such as pink grapefruit.