Geosmin ( ) is an irregular sesquiterpenoid with a distinct earthy or musty odor, which most people can easily smell. The geosmin odor detection threshold in humans is very low, ranging from 0.006 to 0.01 micrograms per liter in water. Geosmin, along with 2-methylisoborneol, are the major biological causes of taste and odor outbreaks in drinking water worldwide and in farmed fish. Geosmin is also responsible for the earthy taste of beetroots and a contributor to the strong scent, known as petrichor, that occurs when rain falls after a spell of dry weather or when soil is disturbed.
Geosmin ( ) is an irregular sesquiterpenoid with a distinct earthy or musty odor, which most people can easily smell. The geosmin odor detection threshold in humans is very low, ranging from 0.006 to 0.01 micrograms per liter in water. Geosmin, along with 2-methylisoborneol, are the major biological causes of taste and odor outbreaks in drinking water worldwide and in farmed fish. Geosmin is also responsible for the earthy taste of beetroots and a contributor to the strong scent, known as petrichor, that occurs when rain falls after a spell of dry weather or when soil is disturbed.
Geosmin is a bicyclic alcohol with formula , a derivative of decalin. It is produced from the universal sesquiterpene precursor farnesyl pyrophosphate (also known as farnesyl diphosphate), in a two-step -dependent reaction. Its name is derived from the Ancient Greek words (), meaning "earth", and (), meaning "smell". The word was coined in 1965 by the American biochemist Nancy N. Gerber (1929–1985) and the French-American biologist Hubert A. Lechevalier (1926–2015).
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).