Flavors and fragrances are widely used in the fields of food, daily chemicals and tobacco, and are closely related to people's lives. Since the 1990s, with the development of the global economy, the living standard has been continuously improved, which has promoted the rapid growth of the fragrance industry.

In recent years, affected by the new crown epidemic, the global flavor and fragrance market has also been hit to a certain extent, and the market growth rate has slowed down. In the post-epidemic era, with the recovery of market vitality and the development of technological innovation, JGAG predicts that the global flavor and fragrance market will reach US$31 billion in 2023.

Data source: Huachuang Securities, Jinggu Agricultural Think Tank (JGAG) forecast

China is a major producer and consumer of flavors and fragrances in the world, and has obvious resource advantages in natural flavors and fragrances. The "14th Five-Year Plan" development plan of the flavor and fragrance industry proposes that technological innovation will drive the overall improvement of the industry's development quality. It is estimated that by 2025, the main business income of my country's flavor and fragrance industry will reach 50 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of more than 2%. The output of flavors will reach 400,000 tons, and the output of spices will reach 250,000 tons.

In the market structure of flavors and fragrances, synthetic flavors and natural flavors are the main ones. Synthetic flavors account for about two-thirds of the market due to their flexibility in composition, low preparation costs, and freedom from natural conditions. Natural flavors and fragrances are greatly restricted by the planting of raw materials, and there are certain risks of cost control, unstable raw material supply and poor sustainability. However, the current demand for clean label products in the global market is rising, and natural product source ingredients have great advantages. And with the continuous development of synthetic biology technology, Jinggu Agricultural Think Tank (JGAG) believes that this will solve two major problems in the natural flavor and fragrance industry. One is the trace amount of natural ingredients, and the cost of traditional extraction methods is high; the other is due to climate constraints, crop failure and Unstable supply etc. In the past few years, global flavor and fragrance industry giants have begun to deploy synthetic biology technology.

In 2019, BASF (BASFY.US) acquired the Dutch biotechnology company Isobionics; in the same year, it signed a cooperation agreement with the biotechnology company Conagen to produce naturally fermented vanillin.

In 2021, DSM will acquire the flavors and fragrances business of American biotech company Amyris.

On September 23, 2022, synthetic biotechnology carbon capture company LanzaTech and flavor and fragrance giant Givaudan (Givaudan) reached a cooperation agreement: the two parties will jointly develop and use synthetic biotechnology carbon capture to produce Givaudan's product portfolio Key fragrance ingredients used.

my country's synthetic biology technology level is also at the forefront of the world, and relevant progress has also been made in the field of natural product flavors and fragrances. For example, the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences uses yeast as a cell factory to realize the efficient biosynthesis of sclareol (the precursor of ambergris) , its yield reaches 20g/L; and its established separation and purification method enables the purity to reach 99.8%.