What’s brewing? Precision food proteins from fermentation

January 25th, 2022

Precision fermentation has emerged as one of the frontrunners for additional sources of protein that could underpin the growth of a sustainable bioeconomy in Australia. Read more from Dr Thomas Vanhercke and Dr Michelle Colgrave.

To feed the global population of the future, we will need to produce food at a greater scale, and more sustainably, than today.

To meet that gap, well need to derive even more protein from traditional sources (meat, dairy, eggs, seafood, plants) in addition to protein from emerging but complementary sources (yeast, fungi, algae, insects). Precision fermentation (PF), a relatively new field of biotechnology, has emerged as one of the frontrunners for additional sources of protein that could underpin the growth of a sustainable bioeconomy in Australia.

Precision fermentation uses the same fundamental principles of fermentation that has a long and safe history in supplementing and diversifying our foods.

Dr Thomas Vanhercke and Dr Michelle Colgrave explain the state of play for precision fermentation at ECOS, CSIRO’s sustainability blog.

This article was originally published in AIFST Food Australia Journal. Republished with permission.