III.2.

7 INTRODUCTION TO FOOD BIOTECHNOLOGY

I. Course description:
1. Credit points: 4 ECTS
2. Time commitment:
Tutorial/ Practice/
Items Lecture Lab-work Total
Exercise Assignment
No. of hours 35 5 40
3. Prerequisites: Introduction of Enzymology, Fundamental and Applied Microbiology
4. Recommended background knowledge: Applied microbiology, Enzyme technology.
5. Subject description:
Food biotechnology is the application of modern biotechnological techniques to the manufacture
and processing of food. The course will cover biotechnological aspects of industrial processes of
food ingredients and additives..
6. Objectives & Outcome
The objective of this course is to provide students comprehensive understanding of the concept
of food biotechnology and the applications in food production or processing. At the end of the
course the students are expected to:
- be able to describe issues associated with food biotechnology
- understand the development and application of food biotechnology
- understand the processes for the production of food ingredients and additives
be able to follow the discussion topics regarding food biotechnology
7. Assessment/ Evaluation
Component Attendance Exercises Report Practical Midterm Final
Percentage % 10 20 20 50
8. Prescribed Textbook(s)
[1] Fundamentals of Food Biotechnology by Byong H. Lee, 1996, John Wiley & Sons
[2] Food Biotechnology, 2nd edition. Ed. by Kalidas Shetty, Gopinadhan Paliyath, Anthony
Pometto, Robert E. Levin, 2006, CRC Press
II. Course content & schedule:
[1] Topic 1: Introduction: history, concept and current issues of food biotechnology
[2] Topic 2: Fermentations: food fermentation and biopreservation
[3] Topic 3: Developments: new developments in biochemical and metabolic engineering
[4] Topic 4: Dairy, vegetable and meat products: origin, scope and development of fermented
foods (yoghurt, cheese, sauerkraut, kimchi, fermented sausage, fermented fish)
[5] Topic 5: Polysaccharides: production of polysaccharides (xanthan, gellan,
exopolysaccharides of lactic acid bacteria) in food industry
[6] Topic 6: Alcoholic beverages: Industrial production of beer and sake
[7] Topic 7: Organic acids: functions of organic acids in food and their production (acetic acid,
lactic acid, citric acid, gluconic acid, fruit acids) in food industry
[8] Topic 8: Sweeteners: production of sweeteners (invert sugar, high fructose corn syrup,
maltitol, lactitol, isomaltulose, fructo-oligosaccharides, non-nutritive sweeteners, prebiotics, etc.)
[9] Topic 9: Flavors: production of food flavors and pigments
[10] Topic 10: Amino acids: aspects of biotechnological amino acid production
[11] Topic 11: Enzymes: application of enzymes in food industry
Lab-work: formation of galacto-oligosaccharides from lactose using enzyme -galactosidase:

III. Reference Literature:

[1]. Splechtna, B., Nguyen, T.-H., Steinböck, M., Kulbe, K. D., Haltrich, D. (2006) Production
of prebiotic galacto-oligosaccharides from lactose by Lactobacillus reuteri β-galactosidases.
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 54:4999-5006.
[2]. Berger R. G. (2009) Biotechnology of flavours--the next generation. Biotechnology Letters,
31:1651-1659
[3]. Sangwan,V., Tomar, S. K., Singh, R. R. B., Singh, A. K. & Ali, B. (2011)
Galactooligosaccharides: novel components of designer foods. Journal of Food Science, 76:
R103-R111
[4]. Sauer, M., Porro, D., Mattanovich, D., Branduardi, P. (2008) Microbial production of
organic acids: expanding the markets. Trends in Biotechnology, 26:100-108
[5]. Badel, S., Bernardi, T., Michaud, P. (2011) New perspectives for Lactobacilli
exopolysaccharides. Biotechnology Advances, 29:54-66