EDITORIAL

�flavors & fragrances 2013�

«The receptionist�s face lit up when he saw her.�Mademoiselle, how may I help?� [. . .]�FranÅois, I�m longing for it to rain.��Yes, Mademoiselle.��Well, who do I have to speak to about it?�He thought a moment. �God, Mademoiselle?��Oh dear.� She sighed. �God and I are not on speaking terms.� [. . .]

Valmont [. . .] stopped one of the waiters and had a word with him, pulling a handkerchief from thebreast pocket of his dinner jacket. The waiter wove his way through the crowded room towardsMademoiselle Dorsey. She looked up at him as he delivered the handkerchief and indicated whom ithad come from. [. . .]

�Sir,� she stopped in front of him; her eyes were a curious shade of grey-green, �you have given mea hanky.�He nodded. �Did you by any chance smell it, Mademoiselle?�She frowned a little, lifting it to her nose. Her face changed. �Rain!�

[.. .] �Actually, summer rain on a warm pavement. But who�s arguing?�She inhaled again. �You made it rain,� she said softly, delighted.»

Kathleen Tessaro, �The Perfume Collector� [1]

Perfumers Can Make It Rain, and They Can Make the Sun Shine, Too. – As the 179participants of the �flavors & fragrances 2013� conference from 22 countries learnedabout first-hand in Leipzig, September 11th– 13th, 2013, perfumers can resurrect the�Scents of Time� as David Pybus showed, can bridge cultural as well as social barriers asSissel Tolaas reported, and they can make one even experience the end of the world(Fig. 1): in his presentation, Etienne de Swardt pre-launched the new scent �La Fin duMonde� (Etat Libre d�Orange, 2013) by Quentin Bisch. Thus, we know not only whatthe end of the world would look like, but also how it will smell: Like salted popcorn.

Yet, perfumers can only transpose their audience into different moods, settings, andsurroundings if they have the necessary perfumery raw materials, the right odorants.This, of course, is the job of the fragrance chemist, and the perfumers Fanny Grau andMaurice Roucel (Symrise) highlighted in their talks the importance of selectedodorants for the creation of their perfumes (Fig. 2). There was a total of 28 talkscovering all aspects of Flavor and Fragrance Chemistry with a focus on noveldevelopments and recent trends. Christian Chapuis (Firmenich) reported an industrialapproach to (�)-b-santalol; Caroline Plessis (Mane ; Fig. 2) reported on new odorantsin the animalic and musky-ambery domain. Serena Bugoni (University of Pavia)introduced a new golden era of ionone chemistry, and Halima Mouhib (RWTHAachen, Fig. 2) investigated the conformational space of blackcurrant (cassis) odor-ants.

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� 2014 Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta AG, Z�rich

The last three �flavors & fragrances� conferences each had a respective moleculefeatured in the logo, and this time it was Cassyrane ; its chemistry and moleculartransitions to Cashmeran were detailed in the talk of Philip Kraft (Givaudan ; Fig. 3).Both Cassyrane (9.1%) and Cashmeran were parts of another fragrance that wasprelaunched at the meeting: �Eau de Froehliche� (E. Kormann, 2013). Cashmeran leadsthe way to musk odorants, and these were still high on the agenda as featured in thetalks of Yue Zou (Givaudan), Oliver Knopff (Firmenich), and Kerstin Schroeder(Symrise). The other ever-popular odor domain is that of ambergris odorants withhighly interesting contributions by Anubhav P. S. Narula (IFF, Fig. 3) around the

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Fig. 1. The venue of the �flavors & fragrances 2013� conference at Augustusplatz, and the prelaunch of�La Fin du Monde� in the presentation of Etienne de Swardt

discovery of Trisamber and Amber Xtreme, and Johannes Panten (Symrise ; Fig. 3)about a seco-Ambrox structure. A hot topic of Fragrance Chemistry at the moment isalso Lilial replacers, for which Martin Schroeder (Givaudan) presented new g-unsaturated aldehydes. The corresponding sila-derivatives were part of the talk ofSteffen Dçrrich from the working group of Reinhold Tacke (University of W�rzburg),together with other recently synthesized sila odorants.

Further highlights were the review of the asymmetric l-menthol process in the last30 years by Makoto Emura (Takasago), the comprehensive contribution of Andreas

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Fig. 2. Impressions from the talks of Fanny Grau and Maurice Roucel (Symrise) on the importanceof selected odorants in their perfumes, as well as from those of Caroline Plessis (Mane) and

Halima Mouhib (RWTH Aachen)

Herrmann (Firmenich) on thioether profragrances, and the feature on the applicationof cyclopropanation reactions in Fragrance Chemistry by Fridtjof Schrçder (Givau-dan). Catalytic cyclization reactions were the subject of the talk of Elisabet Dunach(University of Nice), and novel oxidation reactions were reported by Christian Stark(University Hamburg). Pierre Chatelain (ChemCom) lectured about the deorphaniza-tion of odorant receptors, Andrea B�ttner (University Erlangen-N�rnberg) onodorants in physiological context, and Stefan Schulz on the chemical communicationin animals and bacteria. New umami-tasting scaffolds were presented by MichaelBackes (Symrise).

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Fig. 3. Further impressions from the �flavors & fragrances 2013� conference in Leipzig, 11th–13thSeptember 2013, and a snapshot from the Schimmel library in Miltitz.

In the natural-products section, Sophie Lavoine-Hanneguelle (Charabot) reportedon new developments in essential oils and natural extracts, while Emilie Belhassen(University of Nice) presented new insights into the character-determining constitu-ents of vetiver oil and vetiveryl acetate. Furthermore, there was an extensive postersession with many interesting contributions, some of which are also included in thisissue. Not every contribution of the conference could be published in the Topical Issuesof �Chemistry & Biodiversity�, but the highlights of the �flavors & fragrances 2013�conference are all included. The successful meeting concluded with an excursion to the�Schimmel Library� in Miltitz, which, in many ways, can be considered the cradle ofresearch in the Flavor and Fragrance industry as Michael Heinz (Bell) pointed out inhis introductory remarks.

As compiled in the Table, this has already been the VIII. conference of the seriesthat started in 1991 at the Canterbury Campus of the University of Kent, jointlyorganized by the Society of the Chemical Industry (SCI) and the Royal Society ofChemistry (RSC). With the �flavors & fragrances 2013� conference, the GesellschaftDeutscher Chemiker (GDCh) took over the organization of the meeting, together withthe Liebig Vereinigung and EuCheMS, and we hope that many more meetings willfollow under these auspices.

We hope as well that the articles included in this and the following issue ofChemistry & Biodiversity awaken the interest of those not yet active in Flavor andFragrance Chemistry, and inspire those already active in this field for further research.We cordially thank M. Volkan Kısak�rek and Richard J. Smith of the Verlag HelveticaChimica Acta for making the Topical Issues of �Chemistry & Biodiversity� possible.

We do hope you enjoy these �flavors & fragrances 2013� proceeding issues of�Chemistry & Biodiversity�!

Philip Kraft and Johannes PantenGuest Editors

REFERENCES

[1] K. Tessaro, �The Perfume Collector. A Novel�, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2013, pp. 301–305.

Received March 13, 2014

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Table. The �flavors & fragrances� Conferences from their Start in 1991

I. Canterbury Campus, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent 1991II. SCI Headquarters, Belgrave Square, London 1993III. SCI Headquarters, Belgrave Square, London 1995IV. University of Warwick, Scarman House, Coventry, West Midlands 1997V. University of Warwick, Scarman House, Coventry, West Midlands 2001VI. Manchester Conference Centre, University of Manchester (UMIST) 2004VII. Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London 2007VIII. Leipzig University, Hçrsaalgeb�ude Augustusplatz, Leipzig 2013