Abstract: Flavor is a key factor influencing food quality perception, consumer acceptance, and product competitiveness. Although traditional flavoromics has made significant progress in identifying flavor compounds, it remains challenging to comprehensively elucidate the mechanism of flavor formation mediated by ecological factors within food systems. Against this backdrop, an increasing number of researchers have attempted to analyze the formation process and mechanism of food flavor mediated by biological and ecological factors from the perspective of ecological flavoromics, integrating multidisciplinary theories from system biology, environmental ecology, and food flavor chemistry. This paper systematically reviews recent progress in ecological flavoromics at both the micro and macro levels, explores future trends for the application of ecological flavoromics in food flavor research, and finally summarizes the challenges facing ecological flavoromics research. The aim is to provide important theoretical and methodological references for deciphering the biological mechanism of food flavor formation and for the intelligent design of future food flavors.

Key words: ecological flavoromics; microbial flavor metabolism; environmental factor; multi-omics integration; artificial intelligence