Food Bioreactor

As available farmland dwindles and climate change forces us to look for alternative methods of producing food, scientists are looking at ways to culture food in a laboratory setting. They’ve already been successful at developing cultured meat (remember the $400,000 lab-grown hamburger?), and now are turning to similar methods for growing plant-based food.

Known as cellular agriculture, the ability to cultivate food directly from plant cells removes the burden of keeping an entire green plant alive and thriving, so the cells can produce up to 1,000 times more of the edible material. In a bioreactor that resembles a pod-type coffee maker, plant cells are transformed into a jam-like food simply by adding a bit of growth media. The method has already been demonstrated with a variety of plant cells including strawberries, herbs and Arctic bramble.

The new technique could be an important step forward in guaranteeing future food supplies as the world population continues to rise.