Cellular agriculture is one of the routes towards more sustainable food production
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has successfully produced coffee cells in a bioreactor through cellular agriculture. The innovation can help to make the production of coffee more sustainable. The first batches produced by VTT in a laboratory in Finland smell and taste like conventional coffee.
With increasing demand and numerous sustainability challenges concerning traditional coffee agriculture, there is a pressing need for alternative ways of producing coffee. Due to the high demand of coffee, more acreage is required to produce enough coffee beans, leading to deforestation – particularly in sensitive rainforest areas.
VTT is developing coffee production through plant cells in its laboratory in Finland. In the process, cell cultures floating in bioreactors filled with nutrient medium are used to produce various animal- and plant-based products.
The work was started by initiating coffee cell cultures, establishing respective cell lines in the laboratory and transferring them to bioreactors to begin producing biomass. After analyses of the biomass, a roasting process was developed, and the new coffee was finally evaluated by VTT’s trained sensory panel.
The whole procedure required input from several disciplines and experts in the fields of plant biotechnology, chemistry, and food science.