Abstract
Travel funding was sought to enable attendance and participation at the 244th American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting, held in Philadelphia, USA from August 19th to 23th, as well as visits to several Californian Universities and wineries.
Summary
Dr Kerry Wilkinson was invited to speak at the 244th ACS National Meeting in a symposium on Fruit and Vegetable Aroma Precursors. Her presentation, titled ‘Evolution of oak lactone from glycoconjugate precursors during maturation of wine’ (Abstract provided below, comprised research findings from a University of Adelaide led oak flavour chemistry project, undertaken in collaboration with the Australian Wine Research Institute and French cooperage Seguin Moreau. The presentation was well received and generated some informative discussion, in particular concerning the potential for oak lactone glycoconjugates to be found in wine post-bottling; a theory which is now under investigation.
The symposium included another dozen presentations on topics ranging from grapes and wine, to fruit (blueberries, avocado and durian) and vegetables (asparagus and tomato). Dr John Hayes (Pennsylvania State University) gave a very interesting presentation on genetic variation in chemosensation: the copy number of the salivary amylase genes (AMY1) is known to vary between cultures who consume low and high starch diets; similarly there may be genetic differences in mucosal enzyme activity which affects the biotransformation of odour-active compounds (or their precursors) thereby influencing the aroma perception of individuals. The implications for wine sensory evaluation are quite interesting and this work may therefore be interesting to include within sensory science lectures (i.e. within the University of Adelaide’s oenology and wine marketing programs). Presentations by Professor Thomas Hofmann, Professor Peter Schieberle and Dr Johanna Kreissl (Technische Universität of München) described highly comprehensive approaches to the characterisation of key aroma impact compounds in fruits and vegetables. The research presented involved techniques including solvent assisted flavour evaporation (SAFE) and aroma extract dilution analysis (AEDA), together with reconstitution experiments, to facilitate identification of key aroma constituents and their sensory properties, as well as the effect of thermal processing.