In Boston, Ginkgo Bioworks has been tasked with helping Switzerland’s QL AG, a food technology solutions company, develop dairy proteins. QL AG will tap into Ginkgo’s strain engineering capabilities across multiple chassis organisms to support its goal of providing the market with high-quality, nutritionally equivalent dairy proteins.
The dairy industry faces significant pressures as climate change reduces access to arable land and water, according to QL AG. “Dairy proteins derived using fermentation have advantages across many key dimensions, including taste and texture, as well as the fact that they have no arable land requirement and a lower water requirement,” said Roger Föhn, CEO and co-founder of QL AG. “By accessing Ginkgo’s platform, QL AG can help reduce the cost of producing dairy proteins with fermentation.”