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Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana), a leafy plant characterized by its sweet taste, has its origins as a traditional food and medicinal ingredient of indigenous Guarani peoples in Paraguay and Brazil. Because of its rapidly-growing use as a zero-calorie natural sweetener, global demand for Stevia is experiencing explosive growth. The leaves of Stevia contain sweet-tasting compounds, the Steviol glycosides (stevioside and rebaudiosides A, C, F, M, D, and X) in small quantities. These compounds can have up to 350 times the sweetness of sugar.
Most of the world’s stevia leaf is chemically processed into steviol glycosides through a process, which is multi-step, complex, cost-intensive, and looks more like chemistry than "natural sweetness". Because of the smaller quantities of Steviol glycosides per leaf, large harvests of plant material are required to extract commercially useful amounts.
In summary, Steviol glycosides open up new options for product development as zero-calorie, high-intensity sweeteners. When produced in microbial cell factories, the commercial production of Steviol glycosides helps significantly in reduction of carbon footprint. Other originally plant-based products, produced with specially "engineered" GM yeasts, are already approved as "novel foods" of "natural origin" in the EU and are on the market (e.g. Resveratrol).
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![Stevia Production](/pictures/Stevia-Herstellungsprozess-englisch.jpg) |
Lorven Biologics had adopted a method to produce a mixture of Steviol glycosides in desired ratio, through a fermentative process with engineered yeast. To transfer the "plant" metabolic pathway into yeast, several plant genes are transferred and existing yeast genes are modified – to obtain ‚natural‘ Steviol glycosides. The fermented mixture of Steviol glycosides has a purity of 98 percent and is free of pesticides and other impurities.
Salient features of Lorven process:
- Fermentation of genetically modified yeasts/probiotic microbes (GRAS) for enhanced as well as high yielding production of steviol glycosides.
- Controlled sweetener strategy through strain engineering to maintain desired ratios of rebaudiosides A, M & D
- Developed strains can produce Steviol glycosides at gram/L scale.
- Cost-efficient and environmentally friendly production.
- Taste profile: bitter, sweet, bitter-sweet
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![Stevia](/pictures/Stevia-Geschmack.jpg) |
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