Strategic Information for the Nutrition Industry
Fermentation processors highlight sustainability credentials
Biotechnology and fermentation outfits continue to be hard on sustainability marketing in the food and beverages space at the IFT show. Consider the work of Elo Life Systems, which is using plants as “biofactories” to produce desired molecules. At this point, the focus is on mogrosides for sweetening; engineering the gene into sugar beets allows the mogrosides to be produced naturally, extracted early, with the rest of the plant going into sugar production. Field trials are currently underway, with intention to commercialize by 2026. According to Michele Fite, Elo Life Systems chief commercial officer, the intent is to find high-value ingredients in nature that are difficult to access, scale and extract; using high-yielding local crops as biofactories allows production of targeted molecules at scale, with the remainder going to its existing purpose.