Project description
Innovative solutions for distillery by-products' valorisation and protein-rich ingredient production
The growing global population, along with increased environmental and nutritional requirements, has created a demand for enhanced food systems. These systems aim to deliver more abundant, healthier, safer, and more affordable food. Despite continuous research, environmental concerns stemming from rising by-product loss and industry waste persist as prominent issues. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the BionovFOOD project seeks to address these issues by developing and implementing innovative techniques and solutions to exploit organic biorefinery by-products to obtain protein-rich ingredients for the creation of new food products. Additionally, the project plans to investigate life-cycle and techno-economic aspects in the production of proteins from edible and safe fungi.
Objective
Food systems have created demand for addressing adequate nutrition, safe, healthy, accessible, and affordable food, under the pressure of increasing trend of the global population (projected to reach 10 billion by 2050), climate changes, pandemics, economic crisis, growth in the dietary supplements segment and many more. Sustainable and cost-efficient development of innovative food sources are needed to meet the projected nutrition demand, which have recently attracted the attention of both producers and consumers. Conversely, the significant losses and waste production by the processing industries are becoming a serious nutritional, economical, and environmental issue. The aim of BionovFOOD project is to propose novel approaches to valorize the distillery organic by-products and to include them into a biorefinery system. These will be used as raw materials in processes aimed at the recovery/separation of bio-products, with a focus on the production of proteins for food application. To reach this goal will be developed on a pilot-demo scale, process concepts for bio converting grape marcs, wine lees and vinasse, generated from the distillery industry, into protein-rich ingredients to be used for the production of alternative food products. Life cycle assessment and techno-economic aspects for the production of protein sources produced from edible and safe fungi will be investigated. With proteins produced will be designed and developed novel food. BionovFOOD project constitute the starting point for the understanding that distilleries’ by-products can significantly contribute to the future production of alternative protein-rich fungal biomass for food applications. Indeed, it will create synergies and co-benefits across 4 priority areas: nutrition and healthy diets; climate and environment; circularity and resource efficiency; and innovation. This project is a unique opportunity for my career and will boost my scientific profile.
Fields of science
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiologypandemics
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutrition
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsbioeconomy
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybiomaterials
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
35122 Padova
Italy