Search

Vanilla is a globally treasured commodity, and the consequences of its unstable value affect social, environmental, economic, and academic ambits. The extensive range of aroma molecules found in cured vanilla beans is crucial to the complexity of this natural condiment and knowledge about their recovery is of the essence. Many strategies aim on reproducing the chemical intricacies of vanilla flavor, such as biotransformation and de novo biosynthesis. Few studies, however, aim at the exhaustion of the cured pods, of which the bagasse, after the traditional ethanolic extraction, might still bear a highly valued flavor composition. An untargeted liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC-MS E ) approach was applied to elucidate if sequential alkaline-acidic hydrolysis was effective in extracting flavor related molecules and chemical classes from the hydro-ethanolic fraction. Important vanilla flavor related compounds present in the hydro-ethanolic fraction were further extracted from the residue through alkaline hydrolysis, such as vanillin, vanillic acid, 3-methoxybenzaldehyde, 4-vinylphenol, heptanoic acid, and protocatechuic acid. Acid hydrolysis was effective on further extracting features from classes such as phenols, prenol lipids, and organooxygen compounds, though representative molecules remain unknown. Finally, sequential alkaline-acidic hydrolysis rendered natural vanilla's ethanolic extraction residues as an interesting supplier of its own products, which could be used as a food additive, and many other applications., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Descriptive methods are traditionally performed with trained assessors to objectively analyze products, since consumers have long been considered incapable of performing such tests because they are influenced by hedonic evaluations. However, in the last decades, there have been alternative descriptive tests performed by consumers, due to other advantages, such as a rapid sensory profile assessment, reducing cost and time, and Check-all-that-apply (CATA) is an example. Thus, the objective of this work was to compare the performance of trained assessors (n = 15) and consumers using quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) - traditional method and CATA - alternative method (n = 161 consumers, including acceptance test as well), for 5 samples of semi-sweet hard dough biscuit with different contents of specific ingredients: fructose (0.0 to 6.0%), vanilla aroma (0.0 to 1.2%) and water (9.0 to 13.8%). Results showed that the number of attributes in which trained assessors perceived significant differences was marginally higher (p < .1) than consumers. For smaller formulation differences, trained assessors perceived more (p < .01) attributes presenting significant differences (10) than consumers (2). The sample discrimination presented the same pattern, however trained assessors had greater discriminative power than consumers, i.e., they discriminated samples in more difference levels. The description of the samples was not similar between the methods. The QDA and CATA assessors used different attributes to describe the samples, which reflected in different drivers of liking and disliking if descriptive data come from trained assessors or from consumers. It is concluded that the choice of performing descriptive tests with trained assessors or consumers depends on the purpose of the study., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Only a few cultivated species of Vanilla are used to produce vanilla, despite the high demand, predatory exploitation, and low genetic variability that threaten the production of natural vanilla. Vanilla bahiana pods from the Atlantic Forest may be an alternative source of natural vanilla. This study applied bottom-up and shotgun proteomics analysis to identify proteins related to flowering, fruiting, and vanilla-flavor production. Extraction solutions, including Tris-HCl buffer, β-mercaptoethanol and SDS, were assayed. SDS proved to be feasible for extraction of Vanilla fruit proteins and could be an alternative to the phenol method of protein extraction. Progenesis QI for Proteomics (QIP) software loaded with an Orchidaceae database identified 2326 proteins in our samples. Among these, 75 were highlighted as useful for the synthesis of compounds related to vanilla flavor, such as vanillin synthase, which was successfully extracted with 1% SDS, which also improved the variety of the extracted proteins. The proteins identified in V. bahiana pods indicate the enzymatic potential of this species, as further validated by quantifying the vanilla in the samples., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)