DARWIN is participating in the ACCELEREAT project, funded under the Strategic Project Grants for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE) for the agri-food sector, promoted by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, and Tourism. This project involves a total of 18 companies and will receive a total funding of 18.4 million euros in the form of grants. This financial aid will contribute to the implementation of 22 collaborative projects focused on improving sustainability, energy efficiency, competitiveness, and productivity in the agri-food industry.

The R&D activities being carried out at DARWIN within this project framework will contribute to transforming the value chain in the development of new foods. Specifically, DARWIN is developing new strains and microbial consortia for their application as probiotics and in fermentative processes of different matrices, including plant-based and dairy matrices. Many fermented foods require the action of complex microbial consortia to achieve the desired texture and organoleptic qualities for the final product. In this context, DARWIN is making an effort to characterize these complex microbial consortia, for example, those used to produce kefir, kombucha, or sourdough, and is identifying which microorganisms (bacteria and yeasts) are key in the fermentation process. Thus, it is possible to generate simplified microbial consortia (with 1-3 different strains of bacteria and yeasts) that give the final product the same organoleptic qualities and texture as using a traditional fermentation process.

DARWIN is also developing solid-state fermentation strategies using by-products from the agri-food industry as substrates, with the aim of generating new animal feeds enriched in nutrients of interest.