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MULTI-STR3AM
Newsletter #1 | Overview of last year’s activities
Dear subscriber,
Welcome to the first newsletter of the project MULTI-STR3AM! We
bring you today a mix of interesting results from the project,
a list of very promising events and recent updates on
species approval for food. We bet you don't want to miss this!
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 Latest News
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Large scale production of microalgae |
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| In the first 18 months of the project, A4F - Algae for
Future produced a total of 1 ton of microalgae biomass from several
strains! A combination of different cultivation systems
available at ALGATEC Eco Business Park was used: flat panel-PBR,
unilayer horizontal tubular-PBR and cascade raceway.
The biomass is harvested for extracting ingredients for food, feed
and fragrance applications in multi-biorefinery approach. |
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Chlorella
strains have been
classified as traditional food |
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| Chlorella strains
being produced heterotrophically within MULTI-STR3AM project have
been classified as traditional food by European Commission.
For safety reasons, the EC developed a strict approval scheme for
newly developed, innovative food, food produced using new
technologies and production processes, as well as food which is or
has been traditionally eaten outside of the EU. For algae, although they have been part of human
nutrition for thousands of years, some are already approved for human
nutrition due to their history consumption in the EU (before 15th May
1997), other species needed to submit a pre-market authorisation of
Novel Foods to EFSA. |
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In Focus |
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The impact of HPH on Nannochloropsis sp.
cells rupture |
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LNEG team has sound and solid
experience in microalgal cultivations monitoring by flow cytometry
(FC), as a way to evaluate the cell physiological status, which
determines the bioprocess performance.
As a partner in the MULTI-STR3AM project, using
FC LNEG has evaluated the impact of high pressure homogenization
(HPH, Figure 1) on Nannochloropsis sp.
cells rupture, a crucial step before microalgal intracellular
components extraction towards a multi-strain, multi-method,
multi-product biorefinery (‘MULTI biorefinery’). This
equipment allows the efficient microalgae cell rupture. |
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| It can be seen that HPH affected the microalga cell
size and granularity since, after treatment, they came out from the
typical microalgal cell gate P1 and appeared in P2 region, as a
result of the “smashed” effect of the HPH impact on their structure,
becoming shorter and emptied. These FC results highlighted the
HPH treatment efficacy on Nannochloropsis cells
rupture, before the intracellular components extraction step.
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Upcoming Events |
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