INNOVATIVE, SUSTAINABLE AND CIRCULAR PRODUCTION OF PURPLE PHOTOTROPHIC BACTERIA AS HEALTH-PROMOTING INGREDIENT FOR FOOD AND FEED APPLICATIONS

Europe’s food security and Farm2Fork strategy ambitions require the development of innovative, healthy and bio-based food and feed ingredients. Promoting the Circular Economy also implies using by-products as feedstocks that are currently poorly valorised. Purple4Life will harness the extraordinary metabolic versatility of purple non-sulfur bacteria (PNSB) to upcycle those by-products into a high-quality innovative feed/food ingredient. PNSB are phototrophic bacteria capable of converting various carbon substrates, such as sugars, alcohol, CO2 or volatile fatty acids, into biomass with interesting nutritional properties. Among the variety of compounds produced by PNSB, the Purple4Life project will specifically focus on coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), carotenoids. PNSB contain a very large amount of CoQ10, which is at least a hundred times higher than in regular food. This coenzyme has been associated with numerous physiological benefits in human. The antioxidant properties of carotenoids are also important for human health and have been well documented. In aquaculture, the use of the natural carotenoid astaxanthin for fillet colour improvment but also for fish health currently relies on the production of Haematococcus pluvialis. Thanks to its huge antioxidant capacity, astaxanthin is also increasingly used as a food supplement. PNSB contain alternative carotenoids which were poorly investigated regarding feed/food applications but for which preliminary data were promising. The composition of PNSB thus suggests it could become a very powerful health-promoting ingredient for food and feed applications. The results of Purple4Life, while valorising bio-based by-product, will pave the way for the circular production of these spectacular microbes as innovative healthy feed and food ingredients.