On May 22, celebrated annually as the United Nations ”International Day for Biodiversity” NIZO food research and the BCCM/LMG bacteria collection launch a collaboration that provides the food and biotech industries unprecedented access to a rich reservoir of potential food microbes. Both organisations recognise that harvesting the natural biodiversity in bacterial culture collections is at the basis of many innovations in the food industry.
This is a highly dynamic market of fermented food products, where continual product innovation and diversification are required to meet the consumer demands for healthy, natural, fresh, and tasteful products.
NIZO food research is a privately held research company based in The Netherlands that operates a well known food bacteria collection and a unique screening technology platform dedicated to the selection of food microbes. Collections of food fermenting microbes play a central role in the development of suitable cultures for enhancement of important properties of fermented foods and ingredients, such as aroma and taste, texture and health. Now, a specific subset of the Belgian BCCM/LMG bacteria collection is available for industrial screening programs at NIZO. BCCM/LMG is one of the largest public collections in the world, and is well known for its expertise in the taxonomy and identification of Lactic Acid Bacteria. Through this collaboration a truly unique and highly diverse culture collection of over 3900 food bacteria is open for screenings by high throughput product model systems and genomics-based approaches.
The new strains in the collection are all food fermenting bacteria and include strains of the genera Lactococcus, Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc, Bifidobacterium and Streptococcus. Cultures used in the production of fermented dairy products and plant-based products (e.g. wine, vegetable, fruit) as well as strains known for probiotic potential are represented. According to Dr. Johan van Hylckama Vlieg, Principal Scientist at NIZO and one of the initiators, the extensive knowledge of the impact of microbes in fermented foods and of the metabolic activities involved in the formation of bioactives such as flavour compounds and vitamins enables NIZO to perform efficient screening to select strains that bring desired attributes in fermented food products. ‘This is recognised by our customers and both the access to the large culture collection and the selection tools make a powerful proposition to the food industry’.
NIZO food research is delighted with the cooperation with BCCM/LMG. ‘Being able to mine the LMG collection with our screening methodologies will help our customers to save money and supply high quality fermented food products to the consumer’, said van Hylckama Vlieg. BCCM/LMG director Prof. Paul De Vos confirmed that this initiative is an interesting opportunity for BCCM/LMG to explore a new way for assisting the industrial community in their search for novel and functional food products. The agreement involves an efficient and transparant procedure for transfer and commercialisation of strains.
Strain-specific properties including the performance in product are compiled in the NIZO food research data management system. This user-friendly database facilitates the definition of screening programs and promotes the rapid technological transfer to interested partner industries.
We continually expand our collection with novel isolates from our research and collaborations with other research laboratories. The objective of building our collection is to provide a reliable source of unique food bacteria to our customers.