Guided by scientific and technological innovation, promoting China to move towards a strong country of biological fermentation

"2022 China Biofermentation Industry Conference and Biofermentation Nutrition and Health Industry Series Summit Forum" was held in Jinan.

□ Intern reporter of this newspaper Yan Li

On March 6th, when General Secretary of the Supreme Leader attended the joint meeting of the Fifth Session of the 13th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, he pointed out that it is necessary to establish a big food concept. We should ask for food from forests, rivers, lakes and seas, and protected agriculture. At the same time, we should expand from traditional crops and livestock and poultry resources to richer biological resources, develop biotechnology and biological industries, and ask plants, animals and microorganisms for heat and protein. Key words such as "biotechnology", "bio-industry" and "developing food resources" mentioned in the meeting pointed out the direction for the development of bio-fermentation industry in China.

In order to promote the integration of bio-economy and health industry, and promote the healthy, orderly and rapid development of bio-fermentation nutrition and health industry. From July 13th to 15th, the "2022 China Bio-fermentation Industry Conference and Bio-fermentation Nutrition and Health Industry Series Summit Forum" hosted by China Bio-fermentation Industry Association was held in Jinan, Shandong. At the forum, experts shared with the participants on topics such as "food protein resources", "nutrition and health", "industrial innovation" and "bioengineering technology" to discuss the road of high-quality development of China’s bio-fermentation industry.

Develop under the guidance of the concept of big food

The core of the concept of big food is diversification, which aims to meet the growing flavor, nutrition, health and cultural needs of the people.

Yu Xuejun, chairman of the China Bio-fermentation Industry Association, said that the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that since Socialism with Chinese characteristics entered a new era, the main contradiction in our society has been transformed into the contradiction between the people’s growing need for a better life and the unbalanced development. Food is the most important thing for the people. In the new stage of China’s development towards a moderately developed country, the diversity and individualized demand of food, especially the increasing nutritional balance, has brought about a growing demand for nutrition-fortified products, functions and health foods, which has brought new development opportunities for the restructuring and variety increase of the bio-fermentation industry. The promulgation of the Tenth Five-Year Plan for Bio-economic Development and Guiding Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of Light Industry has put forward new requirements and given new missions to the development of bio-fermentation industry in China. At the same time, it has pointed out a new path and provided a new direction for the development of the industry. The bio-fermentation industry has broad prospects and great achievements, and the whole industry should conscientiously implement relevant policies.

Talking about the future development of the bio-fermentation industry, Yu Xuejun said that at present, the nutritional functional raw materials made by bio-fermentation in China have been widely used in food, feed, medicine, cosmetics and other industries, and the bio-fermentation industry has continued to promote the "three products" strategy, and related products have shifted from meeting consumers’ basic needs for food, clothing, housing and transportation to meeting consumers’ higher-level physical and mental health needs. During the "Tenth Five-Year Plan" period, the bio-fermentation industry will actively respond to the national industrial policy, take scientific and technological innovation as the guide, adhere to green and low-carbon development, optimize the standard system, accelerate the construction of a new development pattern with domestic macro-cycle as the main body and domestic and international dual-cycle promoting each other, open up blocking points, fill shortcomings, form effective supply, continuously meet people’s new needs for a better life, and solidly promote China’s progress from a big bio-fermentation country to a strong bio-fermentation country.

The high-quality development of bio-fermentation industry is inseparable from the help of scientific and technological innovation. Sun Baoguo, an academician of China Academy of Engineering, believes that the raw materials and products of China food industry should be diversified and standardized, the production should be modernized and the market should be internationalized. Talking about food innovation, Sun Baoguo said that in terms of food raw material innovation, industry enterprises should make healthy food that consumers love through functional mining, industrialization and modern production; The variety of food ingredients should be increased to realize the standard first and technological breakthrough; The industry should speed up the localization of advanced food additives and develop varieties of food additives with independent intellectual property rights. In terms of functional innovation of food, industrial enterprises should develop and produce various functional substances, and appropriately increase the content of functional substances in food through scientific and technological innovation to enhance the healthy function of food. In terms of food production innovation, industrial enterprises should rely on advanced and sustainable technology to upgrade and transform the traditional food industry with modern science and technology, and realize the leap from craft to craft, from experience to science, from manual operation to intelligent control.

Ma Yanhe, director of Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, China Academy of Sciences, said that the bio-fermentation industry should pay attention to three issues during its development. First, the raw material problem. At present, the raw material of China’s bio-fermentation industry is mainly grain starch, so it is necessary to speed up the breakthrough of non-grain raw material route. The second is the supply of core technologies. From raw materials to products, we need to rely on the integration of strains and processes to greatly improve the supply of key technologies in bio-manufacturing and transform the traditional chemical industry into a green and sustainable bio-manufacturing industry. Third, the issue of intellectual property rights. China’s fermentation industry ranks first in the world, but the lack of industrial strains is a bottleneck problem in the development of China’s bio-manufacturing industry. We should speed up the construction of independent intellectual property strains, establish an independent intellectual property system and a patent protection system, and participate in the international market competition of the industry.

Explore and advance in technological innovation

With the continuous improvement of productivity, the ability of human beings to use, transform and harmonize nature is constantly enhanced. Amino acids, enzyme preparations, yeast, probiotics … In various sub-sectors of the bio-fermentation industry, researchers are constantly overcoming technical difficulties and exploring rich food resources.

"Asking for heat and protein from plant and animal microorganisms" means that the bio-fermentation industry should constantly explore food protein resources. Chen Jian, an academician of China Academy of Engineering, believes that the bio-fermentation industry needs to pay special attention to three key points in obtaining protein from plants, microorganisms and animals. First, extreme enzymes will be more widely used in the future food industry because of their unique structure and chemical adaptation mechanism; Secondly, the construction technology of chassis cells, the synthetic ability of natural microbial strains is limited, and reprogramming specific cell chassis by synthetic biology is beneficial to improve efficiency. Researchers should start with the reconstruction and optimization of metabolic network, the design and creation of metabolic model, and the analysis and regulation of metabolic mechanism. The third is gas fermentation, in which industrial enterprises can use biological carbon fixation technology to produce fuel, chemicals, protein and other production necessities by using non-food gases with large stock and low value.

In addition to protein, nutrition and health are also the focus of the bio-fermentation industry, and vitamins, as an important nutritional chemical, have a direct relationship with people’s nutrition and health. Zheng Yuguo, an academician of China Academy of Engineering, said that the production technology of vitamin nutrition products is in a critical period of transition from chemical synthesis to biosynthesis. There are still some problems in vitamin biosynthesis technology, such as long synthetic route, complex process control, inability to accurately control and low yield. It is necessary to combine tools and strategies of compositional analysis, laboratory evolution, metabolic engineering, synthetic biology and downstream integrated industry. The discovery and biosynthesis of vitamin products are the result of scientific discovery, technological development, engineering innovation and integrated industry in the biological industry. The development of more vitamin nutrition products and their bio-manufacturing technologies in the industry can break foreign monopoly, improve product quality and reduce production costs.

In terms of nutrition and health, Ren Fazheng, an academician of China Academy of Engineering, paid attention to fermented milk. He said that researchers discovered the functional mechanism of probiotics through the study of fermented milk, which gave birth to the development of probiotic industry. As a metabolic component of probiotics, metazoa can regulate intestinal flora, enhance intestinal barrier, and regulate immunity and metabolism. "In terms of technology, metametamaterials are stable in processing and storage, easy to produce and industrialize, and have a wider range of products. In terms of safety, metazoa will not cause bacteremia and transfer drug-resistant genes, which is suitable for newborns and sensitive people. In terms of probiotic function, metazoans have a wider target, are more easily absorbed by the intestine, and are not interfered by antibiotics. At present, metaproducts still need to break through the selection and engineering of key strains in production technology, establish qualitative and quantitative methods, and mine and separate functional factors. " Ren Fazheng said.

"It is the development direction of healthy food production technology to develop healthy food with natural food as raw material and gentle biological manufacturing strategy of nature." Lu Fuping, president of Tianjin University of Science and Technology, believes that at present, some traditional food processing technologies are being seriously challenged in terms of healthy food development technology. In the production process, chemical reaction is used to treat food raw materials, which increases the doping of harmful substances; Excessive processing reduces the nutritional value of food and increases the potential hazards. Large-scale material processing and transformation by using organisms is a new field of food. In the future, microbial cells and enzyme proteins will be used as catalysts, or modified new biomass will be used as raw materials to make food. This kind of food will be combined with genetic engineering, cell engineering, fermentation engineering, enzyme engineering, bioengineering and other technologies in the production process.

The exploration of bio-fermentation industry resources, technological breakthroughs and the application of achievements will ultimately serve the people’s good demand for healthy and delicious food.