Description du projet
Une nouvelle technologie pour cultiver des plantes médicinales
Environ 18 000 plantes connues de la science sont considérées comme des plantes médicinales. Cependant, seules 150 d’entre elles sont cultivées industriellement. Les industries des produits nutriceutiques, pharmaceutiques et cosmétiques extraient des éléments biologiquement actifs des racines de plantes. Néanmoins, la production par le biais de la culture ou la récolte en milieu naturel, en particulier pour le ginseng, ne répondent pas aux demandes du marché. Le projet Rhizomia, financé par l’UE, développe une technologie hydroponique innovante qui permet de mettre en place des méthodes rapides de production durable. Rhizomia dynamise la croissance de biomasse et développe l’extraction d’ingrédients actifs. Aujourd’hui, le marché du ginseng est dominé par des acteurs non européens. Rhizomia entend créer une technologie de production à large échelle qui permettra à l’UE d’atteindre jusqu’à 35 % de parts du marché d’ici 2030.
Objectif
Out of 391,000 plants known to science only 31,000 have practical applications. 18,000 are classified as medicinal plants, which means they have a documented medicinal effect. But only 150 plants are cultivated industrially. Medicinal plants are a huge global market, conservatively estimated at €70bn+ in 2015. Plant roots provide many of the important biologically active ingredients found in nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food additives & other products.
Production of such active ingredients from plants (cultivated by horticultural means or harvested in the wild) is not sufficient to meet the growing market demand. New sustainable production methods revolve around in-vitro cultivation in bioreactors. The main limiting factor of the current solutions is the plant biomass growth rate. Existing bioreactors are unable to produce sufficient amounts of biomass & active ingredients at economically attractive speeds, limiting their use.
Rhizomia from Botalys is a novel technology that enables a 2x faster biomass growth (reaching doubling time of 6-8 days for ginseng roots) and a 2-3x boost in active ingredient elicitation level (10-12% concentration of the top 7 ginsenosides instead of 4% concentration of the top 7 ginsenosides in harvested wild ginseng).
There is an annual market of ~80,000 tons of dry ginseng matter, growing at ~8% per year. It is dominated by non-European producers. With Rhizomia we are able to produce best-in-class red (post-processed) ginseng with unmatched profile of ginsenosides—active ingredients. With Rhizomia-produced ginseng we are aiming to take 30-35% market share already by 2030 by building a large-scale production facility and putting EU back on the map of major ginseng exporters.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinateur
7800 ATH
Belgique
L’entreprise s’est définie comme une PME (petite et moyenne entreprise) au moment de la signature de la convention de subvention.