FOOD BIOTECHNOLOGY – POTENTIAL AND CONSUMER BAHAVIOUR

Having a quality food in our daily food regime in not a luxury now a days. History of food formulations’ development and its production has shown that it has come a long way from just eating raw food to processed and ultra processed food products. Modifications, enrichments, fortifications and maintenance of quality of products has become a routine. Even though there is chaos about with processed and ultra processed food products about their authenticity and unhealthy side effects, it definitely has given new dimensions to food processing industry. To comment over, it should be mentioned that quality of product, reliability of manufacturer and consistency are key factors.

Today we are going to see how this food processing and technology industry has been blessed with tools-techniques and methodological advancement of Biotechnology.Obviously it has a major role in upfront and backend too. Its not only restricted to genetically modified (GM) crops and animals but has developmental role in nutrition and organoleptic properties of products. Current pandemic has opened up eyes of entire globeabout importance of healthy food and healthy life style. In these series of blogs we will highlight the related topics in coming times.

Generally there following 3 are major sources of food:
A. Plants
B. Animals
C. Micro-organisms

All these segments has got lot of valuable products through technological advancement of biotechnology.
The areas where biotechnology has given its inputs to food industries are –
1. Production and
2. Processing

Let us see how sources of food and biotechnological applications has revolutionized food processing industry:

There are pros and cons of every research and technology. It is applicable here too. Scientific community is already brainstorming over it. Consumers and technical agencies should be aware of the products and try to increase the acceptability by mass population. To overcome the bottlenecks and acceptability of GM products in market following measures should be taken care of -

In all Food Biotechnology is new era of products penetrating into market all over the world. As a consumer it is our responsibility to check every aspects – claimed and unclaimed. Any mislead may result into severe consequences and hence we should keep ourselves updated with changing rules - regulations and flood of products.

Dr. RijwanPinjari