Paulo de Boer

Paulo de Boer is currently working as a scientist/project manager at Wageningen Food & Biobased Research (WFBR). There, he’s scientifically leading and coordinating projects on optimizing microbial production processes in food microbiology, such as food fermentation, production of microbial protein, and microbial safety aspects of food products. Before joining WFBR, he gained over 20 years of experience in various microbiological areas working as a scientist at the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). During his post-doctoral work, he was a scientist for a start-up company specializing in gene targeting filamentous fungi.

Contact Information: T: + 31 (0) 317 481521
E: paulo.deboer@wur.nl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulodeboer/

Powering the Evolution of Fermentation Processing

Consumer interest in naturally produced ingredients, foods and sustainable production has led to re-examining the age-old fermentation process. Fermentation is an increasingly sophisticated tool to create desirable organoleptic, nutritional and functional food product attributes. Examples include flavor creation, from specific molecules to compound flavor blocks such as “sweet-and-sour” and sugar reduction by converting sugars into low-calorie sweeteners or food proteins into sweet peptides. Fermentation also will help drive the transition from animal to alternative protein sources in several ways. Other uses include extending the storage of fresh crops and food processing side streams and the natural vitamin enrichment of plant-based protein products. Attendees will discover the status of this technology in various applications and the major challenges for development and implementation. As one example of advances with this technology, a new fast and efficient screening approach enabling the development of plant-based foods by using a miniaturized version of the product will be touched on.