$14.8 million going to UIUC Center for Precision Fermentation
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCIA) – A new way to improve food supply resilience while lowering the environmental impacts of food is happening in Champaign.
Through a partnership at UIUC, researchers in Singapore are creating a new way to build the food pyramid, one cell at a time.
“As we know in Singapore there is no arable land,” said Executive Director of the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Lab Dr. Vijay Singh.
Meaning growing crops is nearly impossible. That’s why Researchers at the UIUC have been creating new and efficient ways to grow food and reuse food waste. It’s all being done at the IBRL.
“We work very closely with industry partners, so we are producing all kinds of different food products, consumer products, fuel products, through precision fermentation,” Dr. Singh added.
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UIUC has received a five-year, $14.8 million grant to get this job done. The University’s team of researchers will develop what’s called the “Center for Precision Fermentation and Sustainability”.
“This is all driven through what’s called precision fermentation that you can create in a fermentation tank all kinds of valuable food,” Dr. Singh said.
This process allows researchers to convert things like corn husks into useful nutrients with fermentors.
“You can break that down, recover the sugars to produce all kinds of food such as milk, eggs, meat, leather, fur, all kinds of things that we traditionally produce through conventional agriculture,” Dr. Singh.
With a team of researchers from UIUC, Singapore hopes to produce 30% of the nations’ nutritional needs by 2030 with this initiative.
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