Customer reference

Barilla

Basil aroma evaluation

Activity: Research projects on pesto sauces
Context: Looking for a fast analytical solution able to assess basil rapidly in research food chemistry laboratory
Equipment: HERACLES electronic nose with AlphaSoft and AroChemBase
Website: https://www.barilla.com/

HERACLES e-nose: speed up basil aroma evaluation in research projects

Barilla is the worldwide leader in pesto sauce market, with a strong presence, more that in Italy, in Germany and in France.

 

HERACLES E-Nose: Driving Advanced Basil Aroma Characterization for Superior Pesto

The core of the pesto recipe is basil.

Every year, a team composed of people from Agronomy, Laboratory, Sensory and Technology Units contribute to searching for the best new basil varieties for the best pesto.

A huge work that was born some years ago deeply characterizing the basil aroma and identifying the key molecules responsible for the typical basil bouquet. Sophisticated instrumentations were used, that required long analytical time, significant costs and highly specialized and trained people.

Once individuated the key molecules, the problem was to be able to measure them in the basil samples, a very perishable matrix, in short time.

This is a crucial step to characterize all the planned samples in the research project.

Moreover, the e-nose gives us the possibility to have a quick overview of the aroma “pattern” with the chemometrics features of the software, but at the same time, give us a quantitative measure of the key molecules' concentration.

The instrument is also used to characterize the aroma pattern of sauces, and of many other products in which the aromatic profile is relevant. And if you have in mind all the Barilla products of all the Barilla brands, you can imagine how much they are.

 

“The HERACLES e-nose has been the solution for us. Fast, easy to use, reproducible over time, it was perfect to analyze all the samples that arrived in our lab in the assigned times", Alessandro D’Alessandro, Chemometrics Science Sensory and Analytical Food Science and Labelling Group Research, Development and Quality

Barilla Laboratory equipped with HERACLES electronic nose