Bioprocessing as a route to food ingredients: an introduction

The earliest bioprocessing, although not understood as such at the time, was producing foods and fermented beverages. The processes were essentially artisan in nature. They must have begun at village level and such processes are still found in developing countries. Developments in societies' complexity drove the establishment of more organised production and marketing, which in turn encouraged process standardisation and more uniform and reliable products. Although food and beverages were the principal products, the methods for producing them also resulted in technical materials such as acetic acid, ethanol and lactic acid being manufactured. The early development of microbiology was intimately linked with food and beverage industrialisation, as well as the drive to understand the nature of diseases. Today the biotechnological industries encompass many organism types, vast resources and enormous product diversity. The shift from fossil materials to renewables will both drive further innovation in biotechnology and increase the scope for its products' applications, for example, polymerised lactic acid as a replacement for petrochemical polymers. Often these 'substitutes' offer additional advantages, such as easy biodegradation. The future for bioprocessing in food ingredient production, but also in the wider industrial sphere, is very bright. Fully developing it may require an interesting fusion of modern technologies such as stirred tank reactor fermentors with reinvented and modernised versions of ancient technologies such as solid substrate (koji)fermentations. This book demonstrates the potential and actual developments across the biotechnological spectrum.