With our Clust-ER Agrifood “SPES” Value Chain, we organised an onsite Biotech4Food upkilling event on Monday 13 April at the Stazione Sperimentale per l’Industria delle Conserve Alimentari (SSICA) continuing our exploration of the state of the art of alternative protein production in the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy), with a focus on the role of innovative biotechnologies in developing sustainable food ingredients and products.
The event highlighted a selection of cutting-edge technologies and processes for extracting high-value nutritional ingredients from agri-food by-products through insights from Emilia-Romagna-based companies active in food biotechnology were shared with special attention to protein recovery and valorisation from agri-food residues: solutions for the engineering of botanical extraction from fruit and vegetable strains were presented by Food & Flavours; Arianna Andreotti, Business Development Manager from BIOSPHERE, showcased innovative biotechnological approaches to protein production through fermentation processes, including systems using agri-food waste matrices. A fast-growing market (Fig1; source: Net Zero insights 2025), fermentation solutions in the three main approaches (Traditional fermentation, Biomass fermentation and Precision fermentation) require access to scale up facilities for innovative companies, SMEs in particular, that are not easy to find in Italy.
BIOSPHERE explained how they created open innovation plants where companies can test their new products. The example of the collaboration with Clust-ER member BioSyntex for the development of heterotrophic microalgae strains (Chlorella) was discussed; it aims at the creation of a stable cell bank and generation of mutants (yellow/white) to overcome the limitations of green pigmentation, the optimization of the culture medium using DOE/RSM methodologies and the development of a fed-batch fermentation process scaled up to 100L, achieving significant volumetric productivity. Challenging, but exciting!
Figure 1: Investment in privately held and publicly traded fermentation companies (2015-2024)
To close the company presentations, a member of the INNOSAP sister agrifood cluster of the Veneto region Società Agricola Moldoi presented their latest work on molecules’ extraction with health-promoting activity through biotechnological extraction techniques.
