I open the door to the Department of Process Engineering (DEPro) and am confronted by a yellow ipê tree. Ipê trees fascinate me because, besides their exuberance, they take me back to a time when, as a child, I used to mix the perfumes from my sister's dressing table, and from that, a trace of memory demands passage into writing: I light an incense of sandalwood resin or magnolia flower. I take a deep breath, rescuing, from another phase of life, what is precious to memory for writing: her face is a garden of fragrant herbs . A paraphrase of the Song of Songs , attributed to Solomon, who dedicated it to the Shulamite, this poem displays aromas and fragrances, such as those of spikenard, saffron, myrrh, and aloes. It is not known for certain when it was conceived, but it is a millennial legacy in praise of passion, which has spread through the centuries, whose perfume finds support not only in the Old Testament.
In the novel *A Carne* (The Flesh) , published in 1888, Júlio Ribeiro describes Lenita's trip to bathe in a river, amidst the perfumes of the forest . It's important to remember that aroma is present in the title of one of Jorge Amado's best-known works, published in 1958, * Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon* . In the classic *Perfume: The Story of a Murderer* , from 1985, Patrick Süskind offers us a story about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille's search for the universal fragrance, even if it meant extracting it from his victims. These literary works served as the basis for film scripts: *A Carne* , directed by José Marreco, released in 1975; *Gabriela *, by Bruno Barreto, in 1983; *Perfume: The Story of a Murderer*, from 2006, directed by Tom Tykwer. A common element in such artistic manifestations is the sense of smell as a receptacle of seduction, and love as an underlying note, which is also present in the 2025 film directed by Luc Besson, Dracula: A Story of Eternal Love . In this film, there is a scene in which the Count enters a hall with a small bottle of perfume, which diffuses a fragrance throughout the room, numbing jugular veins, very reminiscent of the ending of Tykwer's film, in which Grenouille intoxicates and drives an entire village mad through smell, immortalizing forgotten moments, unveiling the smoke that obscures old emotions.
It is no coincidence that the word perfume comes from the Latin * per fumum* , meaning " through smoke ," a term that originated in the ancient tradition of burning aromatic plants, whose smoke provided contact with the divine. Were these plants, and their essential oils, therefore, blessed? Paracelsus, in the 16th century, perceived the * quinta essentia* originating from the fragrance of the liquid resulting from the distillation of aromatic plants. This quintessence, or soul of the plant, refers to essential oils, complex compounds of volatile substances originating from the secondary metabolism of plants, extracted from flowers, leaves, and branches. Among the techniques for obtaining these oils is steam distillation, in which the biomass is placed in a compartment above the water level. The water evaporates and percolates through the plant matrix, carrying the mixture of vapor and volatiles to a condenser, and then the oil is separated from the water by decantation. Besides essential oils, constituents of perfumes are also present in plant extracts, obtained through methods such as enfleurage, solvent extraction, and supercritical fluid extraction. Brazil is an inexhaustible source of extracts and essential oils, contained in plant species distributed throughout its vast territory. In 2023, the country exported US$476,6 million in essential oils, making it the 3rd largest exporter in the world. In this context, extracts and essential oils, in addition to being raw materials for cosmetics and perfumes, are a relevant group for the chemical, pharmaceutical, and food industries. However, production costs are high, and the almost insane pursuit of economic wealth, in which forests are decimated in exchange for monocultures and pastures, threatens native species, exposing them to extinction. As an example, one can cite the case of safrole, a precursor to various chemical compounds, including heliotropin, an important fragrance fixative.
In the late 1980s, Brazil was the world's leading producer of safrole, found primarily in the extract of sassafras cinnamon, located in the Atlantic biome, particularly in the Itajaí-Açú River valley in Santa Catarina. The risk of extinction of sassafras cinnamon caused the country to go from exporter to importer of its extract in the early 1990s. At the end of the 20th century, technicians from the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) identified that the essential oil from the leaves of long pepper, native to the Amazon biome, was (and is) rich in safrole, indicating that its production could be exploited; however, the initiative did not reach the expected scale. In addition, one can mention the wood of the rosewood tree, an Amazonian laurel species , whose trees were at risk of extinction in the first decades of the 21st century due to excessive exploitation. Rosewood, it should be noted, provides a central substrate for the iconic Chanel No. 5. It is therefore fundamental to find scientific and technological alternatives for the exploitation of plant extracts and essential oils, starting with the sustainable cultivation of their raw materials by low-income farmers, with the addition of simple and low-cost technology that allows them to obtain quality products, adding income to their families. It is up to the technology professional to contextualize their technical action with cultural and social elements, to the point of recalling their olfactory memory. As for mine? I close the door of the Department of Technology and open the door to my office, which houses a shelf with several bottles of essential oils. I receive visitors. Some perceive the subtlety of a herbal fragrance, others contradict, saying it is musky. I lower my head and suppress my smile. The seduction is complete.
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