The musk aroma has been valued by perfumers for what seems an eternity, Its characteristic odor is one of the few that can stand alone, unadorned by the supportive scents that we required to round out a wide variety of other odor types. In addition, the substantivity and stability of most musks have made them a sought-after material for performance-based products.
In the past 100 years, researchers from all of the major fragrance houses have attempted to identify the structural subunits required to provide the ultimate musk aroma chemical (see Milestones in Musk Research), These studies have encompassed everything from the strictly empirical to the qualitative structure activity relationship approach, and everything in between.
The on-going requirement for an even higher level of performance-based aroma chemicals has made the musks the most studied of all aroma chemicals, as customers continue to push for better cost performance in flnished fragrances.
