Scalable Innovations in Biomanufacturing: Food

Fermenting food ingredients at scale to address nutritional needs

Goal

To enable biomanufacturing of nutritious and medicinal foods at a scale sufficient to address unmet needs.

Background and Current Landscape

Food production in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs) is limited by dependence on arable land, is nutritionally inconsistent, and under threat from climate change. Food importation is at risk due to supply chain disruptions, conflict, inflation, and pricing volatility, leading to food insecurity. Investments in this subdomain aim to demonstrate a scalable nutritious protein and food ingredient production system through localized bio-fermentation. Most fermentation processes rely on various sugar sources as the primary feedstock.

Investments in this subdomain explore the use of alternative, carbon neutral feedstocks for this system by investing in the conversion of carbon dioxide to various non-sugar carbon substrates and the optimization of fermentation processes using these substrates for biosynthesis at scale using chemical and biological methods.