Grant: CCI Applied Research and Development Grants

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a natural biomaterial produced by certain types of bacteria. It’s unique nanofiber structure imparts excellent properties such as high purity, strength, water retention, and biodegradability. BC has wide applications in diverse industries, such as biomedical engineering and pharmaceuticals, textiles, cosmetics, paper, and food and beverage. Our industry partner, iLOLA tea, uses BC as a binding agent for loose-leaf tea, thereby enhancing its quality, usability, and shelf life. However, the production of BC is expensive and challenging to scale up, limiting the commercial potential of their product. One possible avenue to produce BC is by brewing kombucha, a tea drink resulting from the fermentation process of a community of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY). Kombucha fermentation can produce BC in a sustainable and cost-effective way, especially by incorporating various waste products from the food and agriculture industries as sources for nutrients. Indeed, iLOLA uses kombucha fermentation as source for BC. However, using kombucha to produce BC is challenging as the process of suffers from low consistency and reproducibility, primarily due to variation in the composition of the SCOBY. Changes to the SCOBY occur during fermentation and between fermentation batches and are often the result of the introduction of new members from the environment during fermentation. Another approach to produce BC is using pure culture, a culture containing a single species of bacteria. Pure culture can simplify the production of BC by eliminating the introduction of microorganisms and allowing more control over the process parameters. However, pure culture has a disadvantage of high associated costs as it requires expensive culturing media. The goal of this project is to help iLOLA tea scale up the production of BC both by optimizing the kombucha fermentation process and using pure culture. We will also test various waste products as substrates for BC production in the process of fermentation and culturing, aiming to reduce the costs and environmental impact. We will compare the yield, and quality, of BC produced by different methods and substrates and evaluate their suitability for the application of loose-leaf tea binding. We expect that this project will result in a novel and efficient way of producing high yields of BC for iLOLA and the food and beverage industry.