Precision fermentation gains ground in producing new sources of protein, stabilizers and preservatives

25 Nov 2022 --- Food stakeholders are keeping a close eye on the progression of precision fermentation technologies, currently positioned among the most viable routes to fortifying future food systems. Considering the mammoth toll monoculture exacts on ecosystems, edible microbial biomass is a highly promising alternative to conventional food and feed sources.

Not only is precision fermentation tech being explored as a launchpad for cultivating new protein sources, it is also highly versatile in its capacity to be tailored toward producing other key F&B ingredients for texturizing, stabilizing and preservation.

FoodIngredientsFirst dives into the latest industry developments surrounding these evolving ingredient systems.

Dutch innovators scale Fermentation Lab
The Netherlands’ Food Valley – a network hub of food businesses and institutional research projects – is establishing the Fermentation Lab, which will be located in the Smaakpark (“Taste Park”) site in Ede. It will cater to smaller precision fermentation companies looking to accelerate their R&D efforts.

Unilever is eyeing a precision fermentation platform as its next big global brand.Fermentation is essential for adding flavor to vegetable products and is ideal for processing residual flows and extending shelf life, states Food Valley. “It is therefore an important component in accelerating the protein transition and the circular economy.”

“The lab is innovative in piloting circular production, [upcycling byproducts] to the market by using fermentation techniques. But it will also specialize in exploring new taste of products by fermentation techniques especially in the development of new plant protein-based products,” Petra Roubos, lead shared facilities, Foodvalley, tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

“It is not a large-scale production, but rather an innovation laboratory scale, which is sufficient for food tasting. For upscaling, other facilities are needed.”

Smaakpark Ede is the initiator, owner and user of the Fermentation Lab. It has been experimenting with fermentation for several years. “FoodvalleyNL noticed this and pointed us toward a subsidy to develop it further,” adds Christian Weij, director of the Smaakpark.

“With the Shared Facilities funding from the Regiodeal Foodvalley, we can now set up a whole new lab and develop it further and open it up to more companies and researchers. Several organizations have already signed up to use it, such as Aeres MBO Ede and Wageningen University Research.”

Unilever’s next “big global brand”?
Bigger moves in commercially scaling precision fermentation tech have been observed among notable food players, like General Mills, which recently introduced precision fermentation to market through its Bold Cultr cream cheese label.

Unilever has joined the precision fermentation arena recently. “We’ve got some things coming [in precision fermentation] in the next year or so. We’re working with a number of start-ups on that,” comments Unilever’s chief R&D officer for ice cream, Andrew Sztehlo.

Bel Group is exploring precision fermentation for its Baby Bel, Laughing Cow and Boursin labels.While Unilever is not disclosing specifics at the moment, Sztehlo anticipates a precision fermentation platform to be “one of our big global brands” and “possibly one of our North American brands.”

The president of Unilever’s ice cream division, Matt Close, calls dairy “problematic,” ostensibly due to its climate impact, adding that the F&B titan views precision fermentation as a “significant trend.”

Sztehlo continues to flag inherent challenges to plant-based product development – including taste and texture barriers, as well as allergens like those in nut-based milks. Ben & Jerry’s has been formulating with nut milk bases to recreate some of its most marketable flavors.

Unilever believes precision fermentation may eliminate some of these issues. “The challenge we have [with vegan products] is that the structure is different, the stability is different and the taste can be different,” remarks Sztehlo.

Last week, Bel Group announced it is exploring precision fermentation for its Baby Bel, Laughing Cow and Boursin labels. In other activities, Mars linked up with Perfect Day to craft a chocolate bar made with microflora-based whey proteins. Nestlé is another food giant that has collaborated with Perfect Day on scaling animal-free dairy alternatives.

And in August, Fonterra and Royal DSM launched a start-up seeking to commercialize fermentation-derived proteins with dairy-like properties in what is described as a “complementary nutrition partnership.”

Deep-learning application
ICL Food Specialties recently joined forces with Protera Biosciences, an AI-driven food-tech start-up and designer of novel proteins. The partnership follows ICL’s 2021 investment in Protera via the ICL Planet Startup Hub, which is the vehicle ICL uses to invest in and collaborate with global companies in food-tech and agri-tech.

ICL and Protera will develop and commercialize sustainable protein-based ingredients using precision fermentation. These will be designed to improve the sensory properties in plant-based food applications.

Protera leverages Madi, a deep-learning platform, which can predict and match the structure and functionality of vegetable proteins. It designs proteins from a database of more than 1.5 billion edible protein sequences and applies precise fermentation parameters for producing them.

“The results address consumer demand for a short list of simple ingredients on food labels,” highlights ICL Food Specialties.

The new platform also enables the discovery of untapped plant-based proteins with high performance. These new ingredients can replace texturizers, stabilizers, preservatives and more, all based on plant proteins. The streamlining of plant protein development and production makes replacement of animal proteins much easier, thereby helping to further reduce pollutants, such as methane and carbon dioxide.

“Thanks to this collaboration, we can offer novel ingredients via breakthrough technology currently not available in the market,” says Hadar Sutovsky, ICL vice president of External Innovation and general manager of ICL Planet. “Once these functional ingredients are launched, food manufacturers will be able to speed up development of clean-label and sustainable plant-based products.”

“We’ll soon be able to provide global market access to these ingredients for key food producers, in a sustainable manner,” says Rado Sporka, vice president of the Food Specialties Commercial Business for ICL. “This will further diversify and strengthen ICL’s engagement and offerings in the alternative proteins space and accelerate impactful solutions for global environmental challenges.”

The research teams for the two companies are developing protein-based ingredients and, through this partnership, will be able to scale production once the ingredients are ready for commercialization.

Comparative advantages
Microorganisms such as bacteria, yeasts and filamentous fungi have several beneficial properties including their rapid growth rate and their ability to assimilate simple organic substrates, such as hydrocarbons, alcohols or organic acids.

Precision fermentation requires significantly less land and water inputs than traditional farming.According to one study published in Frontiers, precision fermentation based on methanol needs 1,700 times less land than what is generally considered one of the most generative means of producing plant-based protein – soy farming. This indicates it might use 138,000 and 157,000 times less land than the least land-efficient means – beef and lamb production – respectively.

Microbial biomass has high protein content and often contains beneficial lipids and vitamins. Industrial-scale production of edible microorganisms does not require arable land and consequently these types of facilities can be located on marginal lands or even more extreme environments such as dry arid regions. 

“Intuitively one would also expect that large three-dimensional microbial cultivation systems (10-1000 cubic meter bioreactors) would enable more efficient land use,” comment the authors of the Frontiers study. 

“However, the cultivation of heterotrophic microorganisms (i.e., those that cannot themselves directly fix CO2) requires an organic feedstock, which must be sourced off-site. If these organic feedstocks in turn are derived from plant biomass, this would ultimately limit the land sparing potential of edible microbial biomass since land would still have to be set aside for feedstock production.”

An alternative approach would be to instead make use of recent developments in CO2 capture and conversion technologies to produce simple organic feedstocks (methane, methanol, formic acid and acetic acid) directly from atmospheric CO2 without any requirement for photosynthesis, they note.

Barriers to scaling up
Industrial-scale bioreactors, methanol conversion plants and CO2-capture infrastructure require significant capital investments, but the Frontiers authors stipulate many of the developing economies in the tropics are highly unlikely to prioritize such initiatives without external financial support.

This may present some barriers to scaling the technology in regions of the world most predisposed to climate change and reliant on current agricultural systems that are failing.

“Any policy efforts to implement medium- to large-scale substitution of conventional food and feed products with microbial alternatives must also take into account the many inherent complexities of the current global food system or risk unintended societal consequences,” state the authors.

They anticipate edible microbial biomass will also be unlikely to effectively compete with conventional sources of food and feed, unless the environmental costs of their production – such as habitat loss, CO2 emissions, fresh water use and soil degradation – are somehow factored into the price of the final food production.

By Benjamin Ferrer with additional reporting by Marc Cervera