Russian technological sovereignty in agricultural and food biotechnology

Newswise — How pressing is the issue of food security in the country today? What is the current state of the food biotechnology industry? Is the departure of global food companies from the domestic market an opportunity or a potential disaster? How to close the critical needs of the country as quickly as possible? How can barriers to the commercialization of scientific developments in the field of agricultural and food biotechnology be removed? These and many other acute and pressing issues were addressed during the session "Technological sovereignty in the sphere of agricultural and food biotechnology. Current status and promising developments", which took place in Sochi within the business programme of the II Congress of Young Scientists.

The event was organised by the Council for the Priority Area of the Strategy for Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation 20G.

Participants of the event focused their speeches on problems of import substitution in the sphere of food ingredients and components production - this was the discussion vector set by the session moderator Alina Osmakova, Deputy Director for Strategic Communications of the RAS Biotechnology Research Centre. She noted that currently the biotechnology industry is critically dependent on imports of food ingredients and components and the share of imports in this area in some areas is up to 100%.

The state of the domestic industry of food ingredients and components was presented in detail by Oksana LUT, First Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation. She spoke about the current state of the market of amino acids, enzymes, vitamins, food additives and organic acids. "But to produce any type of these products we need strains-producers," Oksana Nikolayevna stressed. "We have the raw materials, we have the capacity to build plants, we have the people, but unfortunately we don't have the strains. This is our main area of cooperation with science at the moment."

And can science fully respond to such requests? Irina Donnik, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Assistant to the President of the National Research Centre Kurchatov Institute, Chair of the 20G Priority Area Council, opened up this topic in her presentation. Of course, the lack of modern strains-producers is now one of the important problems that scientists should help to solve. But this requires effective state support measures. "There are definitely important initiatives in our country," said Irina Mikhailovna. - "For instance, in the sphere of agro-biotechnologies, the activities of the 20G Council in this priority area are aimed precisely at searching and selecting projects which will contribute to the industry development. Implementation of complex projects of the full innovation cycle is mutually beneficial for all - the state, business and science".

On the part of the scientific community, the theme of state support and production of strains-producers, so necessary for the development of the domestic market of food ingredients, was continued in his speech by Alexey Fedorov, PhD in Biotechnology, Director of FITs Biotechnology RAS.

"In general, we have all the scientific opportunities to develop domestic strains. Of course, we must understand that this is not a quick process. But right now we have a catastrophic lag in terms of regulatory documentation. Technology has advanced a great deal, but we still have to rely on documents adopted in the 1990s. In addition, there is a need for a single regulatory body. Now it takes at best 1.5-2 years to register a strain and bring it to the market," Mr. N. explained in his speech.

The thesis that the legislative acts in the field of agricultural and food biotechnology require urgent actualization was supported by Oksana Kuznetsova, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Director of the Federal State Scientific and Research Centre for Food Systems named after Gorbatov. V.M. Gorbatov RAS. Oksana told about the topical problems of the industry on the example of the work of the Scientific Centre of Food Systems named after M. Gorbatov. She gave an example of the work of the V.M. Gorbatov Centre for Food Systems, which now provides scientific advice and methodological support for practically the entire food industry in the country.

The topic of cooperation between the state, science and business was raised in their speeches by Sergey Maisel, PhD, President of ZAO West Siberian Investment Holding and Ekaterina Zhuravleva, PhD, Advisor of the Chairman of the Board of Directors of GC EFCO. The participants of the discussion noted that at present the work aimed at creation of breakthrough domestic technologies within the framework of complex scientific and technical programmes and projects is relevant, effective and promising. The production of food ingredients, increasing the productivity of traditional agriculture, ensuring an uninterrupted supply of the required specialised nutrition for vulnerable groups, ensuring effective quality control measures for food products at all stages of production and storage - all these tasks require the coordinated efforts of scientists, engineers, the industrial sector and public administration structures.