Metabolic physiology, bio-process engineering and food chemistry are major thrust areas we focus for product development in nisin and other food ingredients/additives business. High throughput instrumentation for research activities in our innovation centre is provided by the P-TBI. Apart from food ingredients, we work on green chemicals, secondary metabolites and industrial enzymes. Metabolic engineering of Pseudomonas putida to overproduce C3 chemicals is a BIG (BIRAC) funded project of the promoters.
- Redox engineering for malonyl-CoA disintegration from polyhydroxyalkonate pathway in order to overproduce C3 building block chemicals.
- “Liquid nisin”- A cost effective nisin formulation for cheese, paneer and beverage applications.
- Shelf life enhancement of milk through nisin and its regulatory challenges.
Core Technology
Controlled fermentation of bacterial, fungal and yeast cultures using rigorous bio-process instrumentation is the core technology used in product manufacturing. Fed batch processes with exponential feeding is primarily employed for food ingredients/additives production. Fermentation processes for food additives production is currently scaled up to 1 KL. Food grade processes such as enzymatic hydrolysis of fermentation raw materials, tyndallization of complex nutrients, foam separation and application of GRAS microbial hosts are generally employed for food additives production.
Regulatory compliance
Food ingredients we ferment are permitted for applications in diverse range of food industries. FSSAI permits nisin application in dairy products and beverages like coconut water. US-FDA encourages food grade enzymes and nisin by giving GRAS status to them. For new applications in food, we systematically go through FSSAI’s product approval code of procedures. Our food business is FSSAI licensed and our factory in SIDCO (Palyapatti) is currently undergoing FSSAI, ISO and HACCP internal auditing procedures.
