Biotechnology: Challenge for the food industry

Abstract

According to the broadest definition, biotechnology is the use of living matter (plants, animals and microorganisms) in industry, environment protection, medicine and agriculture. Biotechnology takes a key position in the field of food processing during thousands of years. Last about fifty years brought dynamical development of knowledges in the natural sciences especially in domain of genetics and manipulation of genes. Biotechnology for which active role in the on-coming times could be foreseen, not only with respect of R&D, but also in general technological development represents scope of priority in the USA and in European Union (EU) as well. It is accepted that the results achieved in biotechnology oversize scientific domain and find their entrance into economics, legislation, quality of life and even of politics. Corresponding with the definition of biotechnology as "the integration of natural sciences and engineering in the application of microorganisms, cells, their components and molecular analogues in production (General assembly of the European federation for Biotechnology, 1989) European Commission (1999) adopted the biotechnological taxonomy, i.e. fields and sub-fields of biotechnology. R&D activities in this domain are oriented to eight fields and branched through them. Fields of biotechnology (EC, 1999) are: 1) Plant biotechnology (agricultural cultivars, trees, bushes etc); 2) Animal biotechnology; 3) Biotechnology in environment protection; 4) Industrial biotechnology (food, feed, paper, textile, pharmaceutical and chemical productions); 5) Industrial biotechnology (production of cells and research of cells - producers of food and of other commodities); 6) Development of humane and veterinarian diagnostics (therapeutical systems) 7) Development of the basic biotechnology, and 8) Nontechnical domains of biotechnology. In concordance with some judgments, in the World exist about 4000 biotechnological companies. World market of biotechnological products is increasing at the rate of some 30 percents per year, and in the year of 2000 amounted to about 140 billions of US$. Owing to this, biotechnology became one of the most intensive industries in the world. American biotechnological industry spent even in the year of 1998 about US$ 10 millions for R&D activities. European Union included the development of biotechnology into its R&D programs and projects somewhere during eighties of the last century.