Exploring the flavor profiles of blue foods: Mechanistic insights, factor analysis, and assessment strategies.

This chapter systematically explores the flavor profiles of blue foods (aquatic foods), covering formation mechanisms, influencing factors, and assessment strategies. As a core global resource for nutrition and food security, blue food flavor research faces challenges including extreme complexity, high variability, and rapid deterioration. Flavors originate from dynamic interactions between volatile and nonvolatile compounds, with proteins regulating flavor release through binding, conformational changes, and reaction sites, while lipid oxidation and Maillard reactions represent key formation pathways. Intrinsic factors (species, genetics, feed) and extrinsic factors (processing, storage, environment) collectively shape flavor characteristics. Evaluation requires integrating sensory analysis (descriptive analysis, consumer testing) with instrumental techniques such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and gas chromatography-olfactometry (GC-O), as well as electronic nose and electronic tongue, enabling precise quality control through data integration. Flavor research holds significant guiding value for product development, process optimization, and waste reduction. Future efforts should focus on climate change adaptation, impacts of novel feeds, and multi-omics integration to advance the sustainable development of the blue food industry.