FoodHubBCN

Th is is so because the capital costs for PBRs
and associated equipment are more than $100 m-2, which is
at least 10 times higher than for open pond systems.39 Given
the amount of material and equipment required, large-scale
PBRs can be expected to remain at least as expensive as
greenhouses with hydroponics systems, which have capital
costs between $50 m-2 and $250 m-2, and are only used for
high-value produce such as vegetables, fruit and fl owers.

“Why microalgal biofuels won’t save the internal combustion machine”
Jan B. van Beilen, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

… the amount of land necessary to satisfy the yearly protein requirement of a human is ca. 5 ha for  meat from cattle on grassland, slightly less than 1 ha in the case of wheat, and approximately 10 m2 in the case of S. platensis.

Vincent, W. A. 1971. Algae and lithotrophic bacteria as food sources, p. 47-76. In Microbes and biological
productivity. Symp. Soc. Gen. Microbiol., 21st. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Ginseng was formerly a wild plant found only in a few isolated areas in Korea and northwestern China. Nowadays, wild ginseng (mountain ginseng) is rarely available. Therefore, we initiated further work to induce and culture adventitious roots of mountain ginseng through the same process (Lian et al., 2002a) as in the case of ginsengand the commercial application of this mountain ginseng is now under trial.

Application of bioreactor systems for large scale production of horticultural
and medicinal plants
K.Y. Paek*, D. Chakrabarty & E.J. Hahn

“¿Slow Food significa orgánico?
Slow Food está a favor de los principios que defiende la agricultura orgánica, como la agricultura de bajo impacto para el medio ambiente o la reducción de la cantidad de pesticidas que se utilizan en todo el mundo. No obstante, Slow Food considera que la agricultura orgánica, aplicada a escala masiva y extensiva, resulta muy similar a los sistemas convencionales de monocultivo y por lo tanto la certificación orgánica por sí sola no debe ser considerada como un símbolo seguro de que un producto ha sido cultivado de forma sostenible”

via http://www.slowfood.es/sobre/preguntas-frecuentes

Spirulina (rhymes with “ballerina”) is a traditional food of some Mexican and African peoples. It is a planktonic blue-green algae found in warm water alkaline volcanic lakes. Wild spirulina sustains huge flocks of flamingos in the alkaline East African Rift Valley lakes. It possesses an amazing ability to thrive in conditions much too harsh for other algae. As might be expected, it has a highly unusual nutritional profile. Spirulina has a 62% amino acid content, is the world’s richest natural source of vitamin B-12 and contains a whole spectrum of natural mixed carotene and xanthophyll phytopigments. Spirulina has a soft cell wall made of complex sugars and protein, and is different from most other algae in that it is easily digested.

Millions of people worldwide eat spirulina cultivated in scientifically designed algae farms. Current world production of spirulina for human consumption is more than 1,000 metric tons annually. The United States leads world production followed by Thailand, India and China. More countries are planning production as they realize it is a valuable strategic resource. Spirulina is not chlorella, or the blue-green algae harvested from Klamath Lake, Oregon. Chlorella, a green micro- algae, is a nutritious food but does not have the same anti-viral, anti-cancer and immune stimulating properties of spirulina. The chlorella cell wall is made of indigestible cellulose, just like green grass, while the cell wall of spirulina is made of complexed proteins and sugars.

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Spirulina contains 3900% more beta carotene than carrots. At first, this sounds like a benefit: more is better, right? Well, not always. The body can convert beta carotene to vitamin A, and in large doses, vitamin A becomes toxic to the liver.

As they are single-celled they are very small and can actually cause health problems if eaten in large amounts because they don’t provide any bulk in the digestive system. This can lead to diarrhoea which in turn can lead to dehydration. So although they can be a valuable part of our diet it doesn’t look like they will be suitable to be our main food source. The health benefits of micro-algae are clear though and maybe in the future they will begin to make more of an appearance on or plates as side dishes or as ingredients in main dishes.

Several species of algae are raised for food.

• Purple laver (Porphyra) is perhaps the most widely domesticated marine algea.^[17] In Asia it is used in nori (Japan) and gim (Korea). In Wales, it is used in laverbread, a traditional food, and in Ireland it is collected and made into a jelly by stewing or boiling. Preparation also can involve frying or heating the fronds with a little water and beating with a fork to produce a pinkish jelly. Harvesting also occurs along the west coast of North America, and in Hawaii and New Zealand.

• Dulse (Palmaria palmata) is a red species sold in Ireland and Atlantic Canada. It is eaten raw, fresh, dried, or cooked like spinach.

• Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis ) is a blue-green microalgae with a long history as a food source in East Africa and pre-colonial Mexico. Spirulina is high in protein and other nutrients, finding use as a food supplement and for malnutrition. Spirulina thrives in open systems and commercial growers have found it well-suited to cultivation. One of the largest production sites is Lake Texcoco in central Mexico.^[18] The plants produce a variety of nutrients and high amounts of protein. Spirulina is often used commercially as a nutritional supplement.^[19][20]

• Chlorella, another popular microalgae, has similar nutrition to spirulina. Chlorella is very popular in Japan. It is also used as a nutritional supplement with possible effects on metabolic rate.^[21] Some allege that Chlorella can reduce mercury levels in humans (supposedly by chelation of the mercury to the cell wall of the organism).^[22]

• Irish moss (Chondrus crispus), often confused with Mastocarpus stellatus, is the source of carrageenan, which is used as a stiffening agent in instant puddings, sauces, and dairy products such as ice cream. Irish moss is also used by beer brewers as a fining agent.

• Sea lettuce (Ulva lactuca), is used in Scotland where it is added to soups and salads. Dabberlocks or badderlocks (Alaria esculenta) is eaten either fresh or cooked in Greenland, Iceland, Scotland and Ireland.

• Aphanizomenon flos-aquae is a cyanobacteria similar to spirulina, which is used as a nutitional supplement.

“The current price of a 100-L standard sterile reactor is estimated as $100,000 to $140,000. This price includes 30% costs for the bioreactor, 30% costs for instrumentation, 15% costs for piping, 10% costs for engineering, and 15% costs for qualification as well as the validation procedure. Increasing reactor size will result in a proportional increase of costs. The costs concerning instrumentation, engineering, qualification, and validation will stay approximately at a constant level. This is underlined by the fact that the investment costs for a 500-L reactor are between $175,000 and $200,000 and the costs for a 10-m3 reactor are between $400,000 and $450,000 (H. Schindler, MAVAG Ltd., Switzerland, personal communication, 2000).

A rethinking of the current reactor technology combined with a rational  and simple reactor design using disposable materials is needed for a remarkable reduction of reactor costs influencing capital costs. This idea resulted in the development of a new bioreactor generation for plant cell and tissue cultures (disposable and low-cost bioreactors). At present, three types of such bioreactors for mass propagations of plant cell and tissue cultures have been proposed in the literature (26,99-101). The so-called plastic-lined reactor with working volumes of 6.5 and 28.5 L based on an airlift reactor guarantees the mass propagation of Hyoscyamus muticus suspension cells. About 7 g dry weight of plant cells per liter of medium were grown in 13 days in the 28.5-L low-cost airlift reactor (99). The wave reactor (Fig. 11) is a mechanically driven reactor system. This reactor system, available on the laboratory scale (working volume of 10 L) and pilot scale (working volume of 100 L), consists of three components: a rocker base unit, the disposable bioreactor chamber, and the measuring and control units. Here the energy input is caused by rocking the chamber forth and back, putting the cell culture and the medium in a wave movement. In this way, the surface of the medium is continuously renewed and bubble-free aeration can take place. Depending on the sensitivity of the cultivated cell line, the angle and amplitude of the rocking motion as well as the velocity can be varied. Specially designed sterile plastic cell bags that guarantee simple handling as well as optimal cell growth for hairy root cultures, suspensions, and embryogenic cultures have the function of the bioreactor chamber.The wave laboratory reactor has shown a higher biomass increase for tropan alkaloids as well as for ginsen osides producing hairy root cultures(about 40% higher) and embryogenic cultures of Allium sativum (about 20%higher) compared with optimized stirred reactors, rotating drum reactors,and droplet phase reactors used in experiments for growth comparison (100).Another low-cost system is the immersion reactor RITA of the French company CIRAD. The system has proved its efficiency for cultivation of embryogenic cultures of banana, coffee, citrus, oil palm, and rubber (101).These low-cost reactors can thus enhance biomass productivity tremendously and may also have an economic advantage. It seems likely the such low-cost reactors represent interesting alternatives to other suitable standard bioreactors on the laboratory and pilot scale.
New low-cost as well as disposable reactor systems will be available on the market in the near future, such as a low-cost mist bioreactor for the production of bioactive compounds in transformed hairy root cultures (E. Wildi, ROOTec Ltd., Germany, personal communication, 2001).

“It is suggested that these new bioreactor types could improve the process efficiency for more valuable plant-derived products and result in a new wave of their industrial production.”

Regine Eibl and Dieter Eibl