Kerry: Citrus expert talks overcoming supply issues and driving flavor innovation
04 Dec 2025 | Kerry
Dr. Zareena Valappil, VP of Global Citrus at Kerry, discusses the top risks in citrus flavor sourcing, including weather impacts, regional dependency, and diseases like citrus greening. She highlights Kerry’s next-gen citrus extracts and sustainable citrus extenders, to overcome supply and cost challenges. Valappil also sheds light on growth opportunities in functional beverages, exotic citrus varieties, and sustainability-focused products.
Hello and welcome.
This is Isha Noreen, journalist at Food Ingredients First.
Citrus is one of the most in-demand flavor categories in food and beverage, and it is evolving due to supply chain disruptions and shifting clean label expectations.
Dr.
Zarina Vallapil, Vice President, Global citrus at Kerry, is joining us today to discuss the key risks, challenges, and growth opportunities shaping the citrus flavor market.
Welcome, Zarina.
Thank you, Isa.
Really nice to join this talk and look forward to our conversation.
Citrus is, you know, one of my most passionate topics that I always love to talk about and I have been in the industry for such a long time and it has seen its ups and downs.
So, really excited to, show what we are doing at KAERI and how we are reacting to the market.
Yeah, same here, eager to know more about it.
So, what are the top 3 risks in sourcing citrus flavors today and how can manufacturers address them?
So, citrus is a unique flavor category, you know, it's utilizes citrus essential oils for its authenticity and naturalness.
And when you think about citrus oils, it's derived naturally as byproduct from citrus juice processing.
So, that's why it's dependent upon the citrus fruit by itself and the growth situations, right, where it is grown in different parts of the region.
So, I feel like the three top risks are the weather.
The regional dependency and diseases.
So, the first one is definitely like any natural product, citrus is impacted by the weather or the climate situation that it grows under.
So, it's especially sensitive to rainfall and temperature.
So, we have seen that if the drought season is there and there's lack of rainfall, the citrus groves doesn't get enough water and the groves produce less fruit.
Same thing with temperature.
So, citrus grows in temperate climates, and it needs a short, brief winter period, that cold temperature, to fully mature and bloom.
And if there is not enough of that cold season and the temperatures remain high, we have seen that impacts and causes early fruit drop.
The second factor outside of climate is dependency on certain regions.
So, what does that mean is citrus is grown globally, you know, many countries grow citrus.
The citrus grows all over.
China is like one of the leading producers of orange.
However, citrus essential oils come out only if that fruit is processed for juice.
If it goes into fresh market, you are not getting any oils which are used in the flavors.
And when we think about juice processing of citrus, it's only very select regions or countries which actually, you know, invest in it.
So, for example, most of the world's orange juice and orange oil comes from Brazil, and it is same for like lemon dependent upon Argentina, lime is dependent upon Mexico.
So, if there's any, you know, climatic impact for certain regions, or there's some political instability.
Or recently, the tariff situation, right?
This all impacts the supply and cost of that fruit coming out of there.
Third, diseases.
So, I know all natural crops, whether it is vanilla or cocoa, is impacted by diseases, right?
And for citrus, citrus greening is a disease that's been prevalent for the last few years, but we have seen that it's really impacted the overall crop size in the last 5 to 6 years, and it, it has impacted globally.
It is caused by a bacterium, which is carried around by a psyllid.
And it, when it infects the trees, the tree is not able to, pull up nutrition from the soil.
It constricts the nutritional challenge, the bacterium.
And because of that, the food does not, the fruit does not mature and it falls off the tree.
And that impacts the crop size and, you know, we have seen that the total citrus fruit production has been declining year over year, thus bringing price volatility and unstable supply.
So for flavor manufacturers to mitigate the supply risk, we need to maintain, firstly, strong strategic relationship with juice processes because that's where our starting raw material comes from, right?
So, having that long relationship so that we have access to the raw material right away and not dependent season to season on different processes.
The second, is to diversify the sourcing.
So you cannot depend only on one region, like I said, you know, just for Argentina, for lemon, we have to diversify from global sourcing regions.
So, there's other countries who have kind of stepped up in, citrus and citrus processing, and some of these regions are like Greece, South Africa, Spain, Egypt.
So, we need to supply, , diversify our sourcing strategy.
The third way we can mitigate is to reduce dependency on citrus oil through flavor innovation.
So, exploration into areas like biotechnology, fermentation, this has helped develop sustainable ingredients which taste just like citrus, which are critical for the citrus taste, but from non-citrus origin.
So a combination of all these, we can mitigate some of the risks that we see in supply and cost.
OK, great.
Thank you for explaining that so clearly for us.
And my next question is about, what technical challenges do companies face in achieving the stable citrus flavor and products, and how can they be overcome?
Sure, I know citrus instability is an age-old, ages old, you know, challenge that, flavor manufacturers and beverage manufacturers in especially has, you know, come across.
So, citrus, if you look at the essential oil and flavors, they are composed of three major groups.
One is monoterpenes, aldehydes, and susker beans.
And it is basically the ratio between these three, groups that differentiates, an orange from a lemon, because otherwise they all look similar, it's just a difference in ratios.
And monoterpenes, which is the majority of the citrus oil.
It is very sensitive to external conditions like light, oxygen, temperature, pH and as as the trace metals in the packaging.
So what happens is when they're exposed to some of these elements, the monoterpepes, they oxidize and degrade and convert to molecules like terpeniol, phenol, boneol, and this gives like real off notes like gasoline or bunyard.
And this is what, when you put your citrus flavor into a beverage that over a period of shelf life, like in 4 to 5 months, it starts developing some of those off notes, and this is called the citrus instability.
And now when we talk about lemon, it has a characteristic molecule called ciral, and that's what gives lemon its lemon flavor.
And ciral is another component which is solely for lemon and a little bit into lime, degrades under acidic medium.
So if you think about beverage, beverages usually have a pH of 3 to 3.5.
And under these conditions, citrol further degrades and give offloads.
So we see the most instability in the fruits of citrus, lemon is most unstable, followed by lime and orange.
So, in Kerry, we have developed very innovative technologies called Next-gen citrus extracts.
Through this technology, what we are doing is we are removing some of these unstable compounds like the terpenes and reducing the citron, thereby concentrating these oils and making them more stable.
So with Next-gen extracts, we can deliver flavors which are very long-lasting and have high impact because of its concentration, but also is efficient cost and use.
So when these technologies are supplied to citrus flavors, It helps optimize taste as as stability with a higher retention of that fresh, fruity aroma which consumers like.
And we have conducted a twelve-month flavor stability study using our next-gen citrus, citrus extracts, and we put that in a beverage under ambient condition, and it's proven that at the end of the shelf life, Next-gen extracts do not generate off notes and they remain fresh.
So these extracts offer a lower dosage and it's proved, it provides the efficiency, but also gives you a very clean label natural extract, which consumers are also very attracted towards.
OK, thank you.
And how are Kry Citrus Solutions helping brand manage the cost aspect and also supply risk?
Yeah.
So, in recent years, we have seen volatility in citrus, right?
Like citrus has been talked about like citrus oils, prices have gone up high, availability is limited, and, you know, citrus, like any other natural product has been up and down over the years.
But in the last few years, it's been the, the orange profile has been impacted more.
Because traditionally, this, orange has been the most stable fruit within the citrus world, you know, and when in the last few years because of greening, we've seen that the crop size of orange has reduced, and it has also impacted the quality, we've seen citrus, especially orange oil prices, increase 2 to 3 times.
And this has impacted then not just the flavor manufacturers, because now we are manufacturing orange flavors with higher cost, but we also do not want to transfer this cost onto our customers and consumers.
So, prevent the margins and keeping the price stability, Kerry developed, what we call as sustainable citrus extenders.
And we call them as sustainable because they're very smartly designed.
To taste just like citrus flavor, but developed using upcycled materials and non-citrus based components, so that we are reducing the dependency on citrus oil.
So in a citrus flavor formula, which usually has 10 to 15% citrus oils, we can switch out the citrus oil with citrus extenders, and this solution is a 1 to 1 replacement in flavors.
Thus it maintains the dosage in application same, and so it's very easy to adapt in formulation while providing consistent taste, quality, and as as reduced cost.
So this technology can be labeled as 100% natural, so it comes as natural flavor and delivers up to 20% flavor cost savings while providing security of supply.
And improving the sustainability, as as excellent flavor performance.
OK, that's really interesting.
And I think to wrap up this interesting conversation on flavors and citrus, where do you see the biggest growth opportunities for citrus flavors in the coming 3 to 5 years?
So, traditionally citrus flavors have been widely, you know, popular flavor profile in beverages.
So almost all beverages, 40% of it has some component of citrus, and we have also seen that all new product development in the field of beverage, especially 1 out of 5, is a citrus flavor.
But, you know, beyond that, it is also like goes into confectioneries like gummies, candies, but as as dressings and sauces.
However, now consumers, they are leaning towards clean labels, sustainable and functional beverages, right?
They're very health conscious and they are looking at flavor profiles which gel with that healthy aura, and citrus is, is a fruit which is always considered healthy.
It's considered to support immune because, immune system because of vitamin C, it has a good dose of vitamin A, it's a good source of fiber, right?
So for me, citrus will have a natural fit with all types of functional beverages, hydration beverages, healthy beverages like the better for you sodas.
So, this I see as a very strong growth area.
The other area I see is with the globalization of consumers, right?
Like they all are aware of the different exotic fruits that are available, globally, and citrus has over 1200 varieties, and we've seen that some of these unique profiles like calamansi, Yuzu, finger lime, kumquat, they are gaining popularity.
And I would say citrus has always been a, very popular tonality in alcohol.
But now with the rise in low or no alcohol and the mocktails profiles, citrus naturally fits into it, you know, it's, it gives you that uniqueness, the, as as the authenticity and the premiumness.
The 3rd area I see is sustainability.
We talked about sustainability.
Consumers are very focused on sustainability and willing to invest in brands which promote them.
And citrus is one, you know, process, or citrus fruit processing is one such process, which is a completely sustainable, processing unit with zero waste.
So naturally, citrus fits into any tonality or any, it resonates with, consumers where sustainability is a big factor.
