myrcene

herbal terpene Key food odorant

Found in 163 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C10H16
Molecular weight: 136.23 g/mol
PubChem CID: 31253 — full record on PubChem

Key food odorant (intermediary)

Dunkel et al. 2014

Identified in the meta-analysis of 227 food samples as one of 57 intermediary odorants — appears in 5–25% of foods. Characteristic odor: balsamic, peppery.

Source: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 7124–7143

Properties

Odor description: balsamic, herbaceous, peppery, terpene, citrus
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 14.0 ppb 2 published values · see all 17 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 123-35-3
Retention index: 990

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 2762
GRAS publication: GRAS 3
FEMA primary name: MYRCENE

Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33.

How this molecule is described

Sources disagree about odour more often than they disagree about chemistry. Rather than show one answer, here is every description on file with how many ingredient records carry it.

Also filed as

b-myrcene beta-myrcene beta-myrcene-m myrcene*

Same molecule, unified here — previously counted and displayed as separate compounds.

Descriptions on file

Ordered by how many independent descriptor streams give each wording, then by how often it appears. The bar is still replication — one source copied onto many ingredients scores high there — so the two can disagree.

balsamic, must, spicy Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, Flavordb Odor Column 3 sources agree

—

balsam, balsamic, must, peppery, plastic, spice, spicy, terpene FlavorDB 2.0

118

fresh, citrus in dilution FlavorDB 2.0

hawthorn FlavorDB 2.0

mossy FlavorDB 2.0

herbs and fresh flavors FlavorDB 2.0

Bars are the share of ingredient records carrying each description. High agreement means the sources replicate each other — not necessarily that they are right.

Published thresholds

17 measured values from the literature. Grouped by what was actually measured — a threshold smelled in clean water, tasted in the mouth, or measured in a real food are three different quantities and are not pooled.

Orthonasal, in clean water

14.0 ppb

The reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
14.0 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—
14.0 ppb SIDA	water	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In a food matrix

0.249 ppb – 981 ppb

Measured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
0.249 ppb SIDA	water (food: coffee)	Literature corpus	28490131, 12710722, 17487612 +105
0.390 ppb	water (food: grape)	Literature corpus	33232384
1.2 ppb SIDA	water (food: reference standard (water))	Literature corpus	28490131, 12710722, 17487612 +105
1.3 ppb	water (food: lemon)	Literature corpus	20862741, 30009387, 31502246 +3
6.3 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	21404434, 28480362, 39996838
7.2 ppb	water (food: tomato)	Literature corpus	39789073
14.0 ppb SIDA	water (food: orange juice (reconstituted from concentrate))	Literature corpus	28490131, 12710722, 17487612 +105
14.0 ppb SIDA	water (food: hand-squeezed grapefruit juice)	Literature corpus	28490131, 12710722, 17487612 +105
43.0 ppb	water (food: fish)	Literature corpus	24594176, 36144849, 37003052
94.0 ppb	water (food: chocolate)	Literature corpus	17898464
100 ppb SIDA	water (food: litsea pungens fruit)	Literature corpus	28490131, 12710722, 17487612 +105
499 ppb	water (food: rum)	Literature corpus	17487612, 41813766
981 ppb SIDA	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	28490131, 12710722, 17687727 +88

Retronasal / in-mouth

16.6 ppb

Tasted rather than smelled — a different sense, not comparable.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
16.6 ppb SIDA	water_retronasal	Rychlik 1998 · 1 studies	—

In air

13.0 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
13.0 ppb SIDA	air (food: reference standard (air))	Literature corpus	28490131, 12710722, 17487612 +105

Only values we can attribute are listed. Where a compendium's licence does not permit public attribution its figures are omitted here, so every number on this page traces to a citable source.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (14.0 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 17 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
hops	3285500.0	234679 ⚡	PMC5606676
h. cordata rhizomes	111000.0	7929 ⚡	Corpus paper
grape	988.0	70.6 ⚡	Corpus paper
rum	513.8	36.7 ⚡	Corpus paper
tea	500.7	35.8 ⚡	Corpus paper
mandarin juice	485.0	34.6 ⚡	Corpus paper
fish	38.0	2.71	Corpus paper
tomato	8.0	0.57	Corpus paper
mango	4.5	0.32	DOI
lemon	1.0	0.07	Corpus paper
chocolate	0.7	0.05	Corpus paper
coffee	0.3	0.02	Corpus paper

Concentrations from PubMed Central Open Access papers (free literature corpus, MIT-style licensed). Copper = OAV ≥ 10 (strongly perceptible). Green = OAV ≥ 1 (perceptible).

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain myrcene. Ingredients with a measured concentration come first, ranked by odour activity; the rest follow by how large a share of that ingredient's profile this molecule is. The figure beside each is how many different compounds that ingredient has in total — not the concentration of myrcene in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

hops

measured · OAV 234678.57

116 cmpds

578 cmpds

254 cmpds

617 cmpds