Fermentation Biotechnology of Organic Acids and Amino Acids

Organic acids and amino acids are used in large volume by both food and chemical industries. Organic acids can be utilized to produce natural food additives and value-added chemicals such as biodegradable polymers, acrylic acid, propylene glycol, 1-4-bulanediol and polyesters with annual markets exceeding 2000 million pounds. Recent search for biodegradable salts for road de-icing has developed potential new uses for salts of carboxylic acids. If only 10% of the road salts are used for highway de-icing were switched to the biodegradable salts, approximately 2000 million pounds of carboxylic acids would be required and, if these were obtained by fermentation, it could put the agricultural surplus to productive, environmentally safe use. Thus, it is abundantly clear that emerging bioprocess technologies for conservation of plant-derived materials to organic acids and amino acids is very important to the productive utilization of renewable resources. The interest in production of amino acids by microbial fermentation has increased considerably during the past two decades because of their increased use in food (human nutrition), feed (animal nutrition), flavourings, seasonings, cosmetics, medicines and as intermediates in chemical industry. Recently, there has been increased use of pharmaceutical grade amino acids also for internal and intravenous feeding solutions.