Ginkgo Bioworks tackles alt-dairy functionality with precision fermentation amid dairy challenges

13 Oct 2023 --- QL AG and Ginkgo Bioworks have joined forces to leverage precision fermentation and formulate nutritionally similar alternative dairy proteins that meet consumers’ taste and texture demands. The move also aims to tackle the climate impact and cost challenges affecting the dairy industry.

QL AG, a Swiss food tech company that formulates animal-free nutrition solutions, will tap into Ginkgo’s platform for cell programming and biosecurity to develop dairy proteins.

“There’s a real recognition across the market that alt-proteins need to deliver on functionality, taste and scale. That’s what consumers want, and it makes sense,” Kalpesh Parekh, vice president of business development at Ginkgo Bioworks, tells Food Ingredients First.

“Think about what runs through your mind as you browse the shelves of a grocery store or plan meals for your family. So, experience and accessibility are what product developers need to deliver practically if they want to drive alt-food acceptance and meet the demands of the global sustainability agenda.”

Solving dairy challenges
The dairy industry faces significant pressures as climate change continues to reduce arable land and water. Further, it consumes large amounts of process water, contributing to pollution through contaminated wastewater streams.

“Across the world, supply chain disruptions are increasing input costs and consumers are seeking more healthy, tasty, sustainable and affordable food options and alternatives to animal agriculture. As a result, the alternative dairy market has grown by tens of billions of dollars in recent years" Ginkgo highlights.

A creative visualization of dairy proteins formulated using fermentation (Image Credit: Ginkgo Bioworks).Yet, the most of the current dairy alternatives struggle to meet consumer criteria for taste, texture, nutrition and sustainability.

“Fermentation-enabled ingredients, be it proteins, enzymes, flavors or other small molecules, are well received by consumers when they hit that nexus of taste, functionality and price,” underscores Parekh.

Moreover, he flags that dairy proteins have traditionally put forth challenges around protein productivity, economics and functionality for efficacy to formulators, which Ginkgo’s platform can address.

“We aim to solve such challenges with our deep expertise in protein engineering, novel bioactivity and biochemistry identification, high-throughput expression, functional studies and scale-up capabilities.”

The company uses strain engineering across multiple chassis organisms to help formulate novel ingredients using “flexible, regulation-friendly, scalable and economical strains.”

According to studies, the chassis is the cellular host used as a recipient of engineered biological systems in synthetic biology. They are required to propagate the genetic information and express the genes encoded.

Alternative dairy innovations
Innova Market Insights' data suggests that there has been an exponential rise in alt protein F&B launches between 2017 and 2022. Dairy and meat substitutes led the trend, with 41% of the launches in Europe and 36% in North America. 

Dairy companies are also venturing into the alt-dairy sphere. We recently spoke with Stephen Browne, head of international sales at Tirlán, who showcased the company’s gluten-free oat milk as one of their latest offerings catering to the plant-based drinks arena.

Dairy-free milk products are currently the focus of innovators.Technologies like precision fermentation and advancements in protein, fat, texture and color are also key factors that companies consider since they contribute to the consumer’s overall experience.

Roger Föhn, CEO and co-founder of QL AG, says: “Dairy proteins derived using fermentation have advantages across many key dimensions, including taste and texture, as well as the fact that they have no arable land requirement and a lower water requirement.”

He highlighted that using Ginkgo’s platform, QL AG could help reduce the cost of producing dairy proteins with fermentation to make “a quantum leap in alternative agriculture” by leveraging Ginkgo’s capabilities in producing strains at high titers and scaling fermentation processes.

Other innovators are also exploring genetic engineering to produce animal-free milk protein. Solar Foods is doing so by producing milk protein from CO2 and electricity.

Imagindairy is formulating animal-free dairy products such as milk, cream cheese and yogurt, for which it recently received the GRAS status. It combines precision fermentation with AI with its proprietary AI platform to enable mass-scale production at costs that are at par with traditional dairy.

Earlier this year, biotech company Pureture revamped dairy-free cheese by formulating plant-based casein replicating animal milk protein’s taste, texture and function.

In other plant-based moves, Gingko unveiled a partnership with Nosh.bio to utilize its strain optimization platform for plant-based foods to increase their meatiness earlier this month.

By Insha Naureen