In recent times, various food industries have realized that investments in digital technologies are necessary for their long-term marketplace success. Digital technologies help companies in the food industry to gain agility and better respond to changing consumer demands. Furthermore, digital tools have become essential keys to weathering disruptions in the food and agriculture value chain.
Through endorsing digital technology, different brands in the market have received opportunities to meet consumer demand for personalization. Additionally, some of these brands have acquired agility helping them to ingest data and come out with insights relatively quickly and easily. With people changing so rapidly, the convergence of food and health is rising quickly, and different brands need to participate by changing rapidly as well. This article identifies the top technologies that food and agriculture leaders should look to in the year ahead.
Bioinformatics
Traditionally the bioinformatics technology has been used in pharmaceutical applications. Only recently did experts discover that the technology may offer opportunities for food and beverage companies looking to accelerate ingredient discovery.
Companies spend billions of dollars to discover new active ingredients for their production process. But with the assistance of bioinformatics, companies have a simpler, less expensive way of understanding connections between potential ingredients and their impacts on human health.
Nowadays, companies looking for a new active ingredient have to work with players who can enable them to discover new ingredients. Such companies take the information they have collected to food and beverage formulators of their choice. Such Formulators then distill that information down and research the potential ingredients. Companies like the San-Francisco-based biotechnology startup uses an artificial intelligence platform to analyze millions of bioactive compounds. The company uses its discoveries to map compound’s potential applications, which lowers the burden of discovery for different companies.
Ingredient informatics in the food industry
This type of technology helps companies in the food industry looking to speed up their product development process. It is related to bioinformatics, but they differ as ingredient informatics concentrates on finding ingredients instead of finding the active ingredients. The technology helps determine where ingredients are and what their properties are. Then the technology links these ingredients to the outcome desired. Ingredient informatics essentially provides companies with a database connected to all parameters to consider.
Companies can also leverage ingredient informatics to better predict consumer response to new products, formats, and flavors. To achieve these companies, have to work with players to help them rapidly profile flavors. Additionally, such companies help predict what the response might be and how that links to other formulation characteristics. Ingredient informatics allows a company to make better, more rapid decisions about ingredients which helps them include the ingredients in future products.
Alternative protein
Alternative protein technologies are something plant-based product marketers plan to address in order to improve the taste, color, and texture of their alternative proteins. The taste, texture, and flavor of alternative proteins will matter for plant-based products to achieve price parity with animal-based products.
Alternative protein technologies will help address some of the issues revolving around plant-based products. Such technologies address multiple sensory factors and also offer the most promising path forward. If such issues are solved during the manufacturing process, then plant-based alternative proteins will be more amenable to a number of different food forms.
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