Chapter 2 - Different Bioengineering Approaches on Production of Bioflavor Compounds

Abstract

Flavor compounds are generally used as food additives and mostly produced through artificial means—that is, chemical synthesis or by extraction from plant and animal sources. The increasing consumer preference for natural products has promoted significant efforts toward the biotechnological production of these compounds (bioflavor). There are two kinds of aroma and flavor production via biotechnological process, de novo microbial processes and bioconversions of natural precursors using microbial cells or enzymes. The production of bioflavors with microorganisms and enzymes is illustrated by the discussion of the current state of the art developments in this field. Efforts at production of flavor compounds often lack economic profitability, mainly due to low productivities or low concentrations of target compounds in fermentation broth. This chapter reviews also the current state of the art of bioprocess used for the production of flavor and fragrance compounds, with emphasis on different ways used to improve process productivity. Bioengineering provides promising technical options for increasing the productivity with bioflavor production, such as different fermentation strategies (batch, fed-batch, and continuous fermentation), gas-phase or two-phase reactions, specific reactor constructions such as membrane, solid-state or closed loop reactors, optimization and modeling approaches of bioprocess and in situ recovery of product.