Biotechnology could provide an environmentally more sustainable
alternative to egg white protein production

Date:
January 7, 2022
Source:
University of Helsinki
Summary:
Egg white is one of the most important protein ingredients for
the food industry. The first assessment of the environmental
impact of egg white protein -- ovalbumin -- production by fungus
Trichoderma reesei shows that the ovalbumin produced by precision
fermentation reduced land use requirements by almost 90 per cent
and greenhouse gases by 31--55 per cent compared to the production
of its chicken-based counterpart.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The research by the Future Sustainable Food Systems research group at
the University of Helsinki together with VTT Technical Research Centre
of Finland shows that fungus-produced ovalbumin could have the potential
to mitigate part of the environmental burden associated with chicken
egg white powder. This is especially true when using low carbon energy
sources in the production.


========================================================================== Chicken egg white powder is a commonly used ingredient in the food
industry due to the high-quality protein it contains. The yearly
consumption of egg proteins in 2020 was around 1.6 million tons and the
market is expected to expand further in the coming years.

The growing demand is raising questions about both sustainability
and ethics.

Parts of the egg white powder production chain, such as rearing chickens
for egg production, generate large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions
and contribute to water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and deforestation.

Additionally, intensive chicken farming has resulted in outbreaks
of zoonotic diseases by serving as an important reservoir for human
pathogens.

Searching for sustainable alternatives to animal-based proteins has
been of growing interest within the food industry. Cellular agriculture,
also called precision fermentation when used for recombinant ingredient production, offers a biotechnology-based solution to decouple the
production of animal proteins from animal farming by using a microbial production system to produce the specific proteins instead.

"For example, more than half of the egg white powder protein content is ovalbumin. VTT has succeeded in producing ovalbumin with the help of the filamentous ascomycete fungus Trichoderma reesei. The gene carrying the blueprints for ovalbumin is inserted by modern biotechnological tools
into the fungus which then produces and secretes the same protein that
chickens produce.

The ovalbumin protein is then separated from the cells, concentrated
and dried to create a final functional product," says Dr Emilia Nordlund
from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Cell-cultured products generally need more electricity than typical agricultural products, and therefore the type of energy source used
affects the level of environmental impact. However, the amount of
agricultural inputs needed for ovalbumin production by microbes --
such as glucose -- is generally substantially lower per kilogramme of
protein powder.

"According to our research, this means that the fungus-produced ovalbumin reduced land use requirements by almost 90 per cent and greenhouse gases
by 31- 55 per cent compared to the production of its chicken-based
counterpart. In the future, when production is based on low carbon
energy, precision fermentation has the potential to reduce the impact
even by up to 72 per cent," says Doctoral Researcher Natasha Ja"rvio"
from the University of Helsinki.

For the impact of water use on the environment, the results were less conclusive, showing a high degree of dependency on the assumed location of
the ovalbumin production site. In general, the study shows the potential
of the precision fermentation technology to increase the sustainability
of protein production, which can be further increased by the use of
low-carbon energy sources.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Helsinki. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Natasha Ja"rvio", Tuure Parviainen, Netta-Leena Maljanen, Yumi
Kobayashi,
Lauri Kujanpa"a", Dilek Ercili-Cura, Christopher P. Landowski,
Toni Ryyna"nen, Emilia Nordlund, Hanna L. Tuomisto. Ovalbumin
production using Trichoderma reesei culture and low-carbon
energy could mitigate the environmental impacts of
chicken-egg-derived ovalbumin. Nature Food, 2021; 2 (12): 1005 DOI:
10.1038/s43016-021-00418-2 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220107084417.htm
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