Using microbes to produce supplements for animal feed
New technology may help reduce carbon emissions for the agriculture and aquaculture industries.
Introduction
The agriculture and aquaculture industries are looking for ways to reduce their carbon emissions. One potential solution being pioneered by Cyanofeed is to generate carbon-neutral microbial delivery platforms. These custom microbes are adapted to improve their efficacy as feed additives, providing a sustainable and effective substitution for animal-based nutrients and chemically synthesised therapeutics.
Challenge
Cyanofeed wanted to develop a new technology to improve the efficacy of micro-organisms to act as a renewable source of nutrients and therapeutics for animal feed. This will help the agriculture and aquaculture industries to reduce their carbon emissions by providing carbon-neutral alternatives to existing products as well as reducing their vulnerability to market price volatilities.
Cyanofeed’s projections were all theoretical and based on data obtained in laboratory experiments. These theoretical projections needed to be tested to obtain proof of concept data. Cyanofeed’s overall aim was to optimise the pellet-feed manufacturing process to account for the inclusion of their microbial strains, prior to a feeding trial at the University of Stirling.
Solution
Thanks to a funding award under IBioIC’s Scale Up Accelerator programme, Cyanofeed was able to utilise IBioIC’s Scale Up Centres and technical team to test their theoretical projections of the biomass that can be produced from optimised fermentation and freeze-drying conditions.
Cyanofeed had provided five different micro-organisms they wanted to investigate. The team grew each of these strains in 1.5L stirred bioreactors to make enough biomass to take on to the next stage of the project. This second stage involved harvesting the microbes and then treating them with several different cryoprotectants to protect them from the freeze-drying process. Samples were then freeze-dried and revived to determine the best composition of cryoprotectant and which micro-organism was most robust against the freeze-drying process.
Outcome
The team successfully upscaled the biomass production of a number of microbes for a feeding trial at the University of Stirling and paved the way for optimised large-scale biomass processing and pellet-feed manufacturing.
“We are grateful to the IBioIC. Their expertise enabled us to fast-track the development our of microbial delivery-platforms, bringing us one step closer to commercialisation.””
