Virtual BYPROVALUE kick-off meeting: “Multifunctional high-value fungal biomass from the Norwegian agriculture supply chain by-products”

Today, the Norwegian-European bioeconomy R&D project BYPROVALUE had its late and virtual kick-off meeting. The project aims to develop biorefineries using oleaginous (= oil-producing) Zygomycetes fungi to convert agricultural waste products such as animal fat or spent yeast from breweries into a range of value-added products, such as high-quality lipids for feed and food, immunostimulatory beta-glucans, or chitosans for purification of drinking water. To this end, a consortium of four academic partners will create value-added chains linking industrial partners from both sides – providers of waste by-products and potential users of the fungal products – by developing processes for the value addition. The project is financially supported by the Norwegian Research Council, so the roles of the non-Norwegian partners is limited. Ours is the analysis of the chitin and chitosan that we will isolate from the Zygomycetes cell walls. The results will guide the way towards the most profitable use of the chitosans, possibly for water treatment, but hopefully also in life-science applications, e.g. as a prebiotic feed additive or in the biomedical field. While the former applications make use of the material properties of bulk chitosan where the demand on purity is less rigid, the latter rely on the biological activities of the chitosans. To our knowledge, these will be the first in depth analyses of natural chitosans isolated in their native stage, carrying the original in muro fraction and pattern of acetylation. We predict that these will differ significantly from today’s conventional chitosans produced through chemical modification of chitin. Exciting!