Session Report: “Nourishing a Growing World – Food Transition for a Healthy Planet and Healthy Lives”

At the 2025 edition of Knowledge for Growth, organized by flanders.bio (now launched as BioVia!), bio-solutions in food was explored in a compelling session dedicated to innovations in the agrifood sector. In a collaboration with The ProteInn Club, the session explored how cutting-edge biotechnological solutions take part in our food systems – enhancing sustainability, nutrition, and resilience.

Bio-solutions in food: tiny but mighty – Novonesis

Frank Haagensen, Head of Applied R&D for Fermented Dairy Alternatives at Novonesis, opened the session with an assertion: “Biosolutions are tiny but mighty.” These bio-based tools – ranging from enzymes to microorganisms like bacteria, yeasts, and fungi – play transformative roles in food production, improving texture, taste, nutritional profile, and shelf-life.
Novonesis, applies these solutions across 30 industries, among which is food and feed. Traditional processes such as cheese and bread fermentation have evolved into sophisticated applications – such as oat-based drinks enhanced through fermentation, or innovative plant-based cheese alternatives that are both nutritious and flavorful. A standout innovation is FreshQ, a culture developed to extend the shelf-life of fermented dairy products by increasing resistance to spoilage from unwanted microbes such as yeasts, molds, and bacteria. This contributes to reducing food waste and supports product stability throughout distribution and storage.
Haagensen emphasized the value of collaborative ecosystems: “Partnerships between large and small companies, as well as open-access pilot infrastructures, are key to accelerating the adoption and refinement of bio-solutions tailored to diverse applications.”

The challenge and promise of alternative proteins

The session moved into a deeper dive on alternative proteins, with Geert Van Royen, food processing expert at ILVO, Food Pilot, outlining the urgency for a food system transition. Food production and consumption today accounts for nearly 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, mainly related to livestock farming, requiring large amounts of land and water. At the same time, global protein demand rises. So, there is a need for alternative proteins, also called additional proteins.
However, replacing conventional animal proteins is far from straightforward. Nutritional value is one challenge – ensuring alternative proteins contain all essential amino acids and are digestible. For instance, microalgae offer promising protein yields but come with rigid cell walls that complicate processing and digestion. Some newly explored protein sources also pose risks such as allergens, mycotoxins, heavy metals, or antinutritional factors that inhibit nutrient absorption.
“Among the most promising approaches are fermentation-based proteins.” There is biomass fermentation, where the microbial biomass itself serves as the protein source. It is regarded a highly efficient and sustainable production system. Precision fermentation is a more advanced technique, that enables the production of specific proteins – such as casein, myoglobin, or betaglucan – produced by the microorganisms and harvested from the growth medium. It is also used to produce sweeteners, complex oligosaccharides, and functional ingredients.

Establishing a mycoprotein production factory – MAASH

The session concluded with an industry case study presented by Gaspard Gilbert, Managing Director at MAASH, a Belgian biotech company specializing in mycoproteins. In 2024, MAASH repurposed the Metex Noovista facility in Eastern France to launch its mycoprotein production plant, leveraging cutting-edge fermentation technology.
Their product is a fungal-derived mycoprotein, a sustainable, high-quality alternative to meat, dairy or other animal-based ingredient. “At MAASH we do not only target vegetarian markets, but also hybrid products, replacing up to 30% of the meat content in items like a burger or chicken nuggets. This pragmatic strategy aims for broad consumer adoption, facilitating impactful reductions in meat consumption across mainstream diets.”

Final words

The session reinforced a powerful message: bio-solutions are not just a vision for the future, they are actionable, scalable innovations driving today’s transformation in food systems. From improving dairy fermentation to rethinking protein production, the integration of biotechnology in agrifood is essential to nourishing a growing world sustainably.