Allan Olspert

Functional foods for gastrointestinal health represent a rapidly evolving field in food and health sciences.The aim of this project is to develop novel health-promoting food solutions using postbiotics, i.e. bioactive compounds produced by bacteria. Unlike probiotics, postbiotics do not contain live microorganisms, making them safer and easier to use in food processing. The project focuses on a Ligilactobacillus salivarius strain that has demonstrated anti-inflammatory effects, the ability to inhibit epithelial-mesenchymal transition in gastric epithelial cells and to reduce cancer cell self-renewal in live bacterial cultures and in cell-free supernatants. The project will identify the compounds responsible for these effects and evaluate their stability during food processing and their impact on product shelf life. The results will be validated in food matrices and production processes, including fermentation. The project will lead to the development of new functional food solutions.

Mycoprotein texturization technologies are being developed to create high-quality alternative meat and fish products. The work includes optimizing the composition and structure of prototypes and evaluating their quality. The technology will be scaled up from laboratory to industrial scale. The result will be an industrially applicable solution for developing mycoprotein-based products.

The existing solid face fermentation systems do not ensure the optimal oxygen supply, nor temperature, high microbial contamination risk is also common for those systems. The aim of current project is to develop a simple and cheap system for cultivation of fungi or mycelium equipped with oxygen and temperature control. That improves the growth rate and yield of fungal biomass. System is universal, in addition to cultivation of fungi it enables to carry out high temperature composting. We use 20 - 200 L polypropylene bags as cultivation vessels, that are equipped with process control head. This cultivation vessel enables sterilization, aseptic inoculation, aeration and cooling of growth substrate. Cultivation vessel is connected to control system for oxygen and temperature monitoring and process control at least in 4 individual cultivation vessels.