The 16^th edition of the Weurman Flavour Research Symposium, organised by Elisabeth Guichard and Jean-Luc Le Quéré from INRAE, CSGA, Dijon, France, was scheduled in September 2020 in Dijon. Due to the ongoing pandemic Covid-19 issues, the symposium was postponed in May 2021, and finally held online (Live and On-demand) on May 4-6. This conference, created in 1975 in memory of Cornelius Weurman and held every three years in different countries in Europe, is an internationally recognised Symposium gathering well-known scientists from academia and industry from different disciplines in the field of flavour research: chemistry, biology, neuro-physiology, psychology.

https://symposium.inrae.fr/weurman2020/

Foreword

Dear participants,
Dear colleagues and friends,

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 16th Weurman Flavour Research Symposium. Since 1975, the Weurman symposia held every three years in different European countries have been unique opportunities for scientists from academia and industry, from different disciplines, and from all over the World, to discuss trends and new paradigms in the field of flavour research. It would have been a great honour for us to host the 16th edition of this internationally recognised Symposium in Dijon. Unfortunately, a certain coronavirus decided another way, and the resulting ongoing pandemic crisis constrained us to hold this edition of the Weurman Flavour Research Symposium online.

We would like to thank the members of the scientific committee for the difficult task they undertook for helping us and arranging the scientific programme. With some solicited colleagues, they also accepted to chair the oral sessions: we are indebted to all for their support. The members of the scientific committee will have also the difficult task to evaluate posters for the poster awards, and to review the manuscripts for the Proceedings.

We also thank the organisers of the four workshops planned during this Symposium. These workshops will give the participants the opportunity to exchange on specific hot topics.

We would like to acknowledge the generous support of our sponsors. Their financial support greatly helped us in organising this online conference. With their support, it was possible to propose low registration fees, especially for PhD students and young post-docs who registered massively. We hope that their participation in the symposium will encourage them to continue their research activities in the exciting domain of flavour. Thanks to our sponsors’ support, it has been also possible to set awards for best poster presentations in each poster session that will be presented during an award ceremony (unfortunately online), just before the closing ceremony (also unfortunately online).

Finally, we would like to thank all the active participants who, by their contributions in terms of oral and poster presentations, helped us to arrange a scientific programme that we hope you will enjoy.

We wish you a successful online conference, with a lot of interactions and discussions despite the particular conditions, and the absence of social events that are always inspiring!

Enjoy the 16th Weurman Flavour Research Symposium, online!

Elisabeth Guichard
Jean-Luc Le Quéré