In Search Of The World’s Perfect Fragrance

With Givaudan-Roure’s ScentTrek™

 

Innovative Technology Captures Plant’s Aroma In Its

Natural Environment Without Harming it

 

Under the dense canopy of the Costa Rican rain forest, amidst the cries of howler monkeys, Carlos Vinas and Ken Purzycki stop to smell a tree. To their astonishment, a pungent smell of black currant exudes as they scrape the bark.

Carlos and Ken are not botanists or backpackers. They are respectively a Givaudan-Roure master perfumer and a fragrance scientist on a ScentTrek™, in search of the perfect aroma. Their mission: to find a rare flower they have read about which they believe will supply the perfect note for a new fragrance.

Three hours later, Carlos and Ken have hiked through several miles of jungle. As ScentTrekers™ know, nature does not yield her secrets easily: the flower that they seek is a night bloomer and resides high on the side of the volcano.

Spying a burst of purple in a sea of jungle green, Carlos and Ken find the long-sought-for flower. They quickly unload one of the most sophisticated portable olfactory detection devices ever invented -- ScentTrek™. This remarkable piece of equipment will perfectly capture the scent of the flower in its natural habitat.

The value of the ScentTrek™ system is quickly evident. Night is fast approaching. The ScentTrekers™ gently enclose the rare flower in a glass dome connected to the ScentTrek™ computer. A complex software algorithm is initiated to determine when the flower will be at its olfactive peak. This allows the ScentTrekers™ to get back to the safety of base camp while the equipment captures the flower’s fragrance.

Carlos and Ken’s earlier projections with the ScentTrek™ computer at base camp have paid off -- the flower is in full bloom. As it exudes its aroma, it passes through ScentTrek’s™ hermetically sealed microfilter, capturing all subtle elements that make the fragrance: the soil, air, surrounding fauna, and countless other nuances. Each scent molecule is identified, even in quantities as small as a billionth of a gram. A perfect olfactive snapshot, the flower’s scent can now be recreated for use by the perfumery team. As important, no damage was done to the flower or the jungle’s fragile ecosystem.

Vanishing wilderness and dwindling numbers of plants call for more sophisticated technologies to explore nature’s aromascape. And finding a new scent in the competitive world of perfumery is becoming increasingly difficult. So, the world’s oldest perfume house has embarked on a mission to develop a technological marvel to meet these challenges.

ScentTrek™ was born out of Givaudan-Roure’s pioneering work in “headspace technology” over twenty years ago. Headspace technology captures the scent of a plant, but its use is confined to a laboratory or greenhouse. Since the scent of any living thing is the product of the surrounding elements in its environment, the subtle notes that make up the plant’s aroma remain undetected in a lab. ScentTrek’s™ new technology allows Givaudan-Roure to explore the most remote regions of the rain forest to capture rare olfactive scenes: a forest clearing blooming with rare flowers and rich green notes; the fragrance of a sun-warmed tropical beach and the dense foliage bordering the sand’s edge.

ScentTrek™ has revolutionized the way Givaudan-Roure creates fragrances. In addition to using traditional methods, ScentTrek™ teams track the wilds like Old World explorers, looking for a novel new note that may inspire the next L’Air du Temps. Their wanderings take them to every corner of the globe: the Costa Rican jungle, the snowy Himalayas, French Guyana’s Canapé Region, the Isle of Brittany, and the monasteries and temples of Japan.

While ScentTrek™ allows Givaudan-Roure to capture the true olfactive essence of flora and fauna without harming it, it has also revealed profound discoveries: the rain forest exudes a different fragrance at dawn, midday, and dusk; the woods emit a new aromatic palette with the changing seasons; and our world is truly an infinitude of olfactive scenes.

Nature’s abundance surely holds undiscovered secrets that, when found, will inspire us in years to come. With ScentTrek™, the Givaudan-Roure perfumery team will be on the frontiers, bringing each of us a little closer to Nature’s infinite power.

 

ScentTrek™ employs two new ground-breaking technologies: it is portable, thus allowing Givaudan-Roure to find and analyze even the most remote or rare plant in its own ecosystem. Second, ScentTrek’s™ computer can analyze nature’s subtly complex biorhythms in order to determine when the flower or plant will be at its olfactive peak. Together, these two advances allow Givaudan-Roure to capture any fragrance in its most pure, unadulterated form.

 

 

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