Microbially Derived Off-Flavor from Geosmin and 2-Methylisoborneol: Sources and Remediation

The occurrence of tastes and odors is a recurrent problem in the beverage, potable water, food, and aquaculture industries. Taste-and-odor (T/O) occurrences have been documented in a number of public water supply reservoirs (Silvey et al. 1950; Suffet et al. 1996) in the United States (Rosen et al. 1970; Izaguirre et al. 1982; Seligman et al. 1992; Burlingame et al. 1986, 1992; Young et al. 1999), Canada (Slater and Blok 1983a, b), Japan (Yagi et al. 1981, 1983; Yagi 1988; Hosaka et al. 1995), Australia (Hayes and Burch 1989; Baker 1992; Baker et al. 1994, 2001), The Netherlands (Piet et al. 1972), Sweden (Lundgren et al. 1988), Germany (Mohren and Jüttner 1983), Finland (Veijanen et al. 1988, 1992), France (Cotsaris et al. 1995), India (Desikachary 1959; Arora and Gupta 1983; Krishnani et al. 2005, 2006a), Taiwan (Lin et al. 2002), and Spain (Sabater et al. 2003; Vilalta et al. 2003, 2004). Food industries, including grapes (La Guerche et al. 2005), apples (Frank 1977; Siegmund and Pollinger-Zierler 2006), pears (Nunes 2002), peaches (Mercier and Jimenez 2004), and vegetables such as dried beans or beetroot (Maga 1987) have also been affected with inconsistent flavor. Based on suspected origins, Tucker and van der Ploeg (1999) and van der Ploeg (1991) categorized off-flavors as rotten, decayed, cardboard, stale, petroleum, fishy, woody, earthy or muddy, and musty. This chapter presents an extensive review of chemical causes of off-flavor problems, especially with reference to muddy and musty flavor in aquatic organisms and possible remediation techniques.