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''cis''-3-Hexenal, also known as (''Z'')-3-hexenal and leaf aldehyde, is an
Hexenal
organic compound
In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. The ...
with the formula CH3CH2CH=CHCH2CHO. It is classified as an unsaturated aldehyde. It is a colorless liquid and an aroma compound
An aroma compound, also known as an odorant, aroma, fragrance or flavoring, is a chemical compound that has a smell or odor. For an individual chemical or class of chemical compounds to impart a smell or fragrance, it must be sufficiently vo ...
with an intense odor
An odor (American English) or odour (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is caused by one or more volatilized chemical compounds ...
of freshly cut grass
Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns an ...
and leaves
A leaf (plural, : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant plant stem, stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", wh ...
.
Occurrence
It is one of the major volatile compounds in ripetomato
The tomato is the edible berry of the plant ''Solanum lycopersicum'', commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Mexican Nahuatl word gave rise to the Spanish word ...
es, although it tends to isomerize into the conjugated ''trans''-2-hexenal. It is produced in small amounts by most plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...
s and it acts as an attractant
An attractant is any chemical that attracts an organism, e.g. i) synthetic lures; ii) aggregation and sex pheromones (intraspecific interactions); and iii) synomone (interspecific interactions)
Synomone
An interspecific semiochemical that is b ...
to many predator
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...
y insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...
s. It is also a pheromone
A pheromone () is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting like hormones outside the body of the secreting individual, to affect the behavio ...
in many insect species.
See also
* ''cis''-3-hexen-1-ol has a similar but weaker odor and is used inflavor
Flavor or flavour is either the sensory perception of taste or smell, or a flavoring in food that produces such perception.
Flavor or flavour may also refer to:
Science
*Flavors (programming language), an early object-oriented extension to Lis ...
s and perfume
Perfume (, ; french: parfum) is a mixture of fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds (fragrances), fixatives and solvents, usually in liquid form, used to give the human body, animals, food, objects, and living-spaces an agreeable scent. Th ...
s.
* 1-Hexanol, another volatile organic compound
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic compounds that have a high vapour pressure at room temperature. High vapor pressure correlates with a low boiling point, which relates to the number of the sample's molecules in the surrounding air, a ...
, also considered responsible for the freshly mowed grass odor
External links
Hexenal
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hexenal, cis-3- Flavors Insect pheromones Insect ecology Alkenals