Bioactive terpenoids as high performance ingredients for industry

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For the UK to achieve its Net Zero targets there is an urgent need across industrial sectors to replace the reliance on petrochemical based feedstocks with sustainable bio-based feedstock. Croda is a UK based multinational company and global leader in high performance ingredients and technologies that are found in some of the most successful brands in the world across a wide range of markets including Personal, Health and Crop Care. Croda has recently undertaken an Executive Committee level product portfolio review and identified a need to focus innovation activities upon industrial biotechnology as a route to sustainable and biobased ingredients across a broad range of areas. Terpenoids represent one of the largest and most diverse classes of natural products in the world, providing an array of functionalities for different industry sectors ranging from flavour and fragrance to human health and personal care. The Graham laboratory at the University of York is world leading in the discovery and development of different classes of terpenoids from plants and have recently been collaborating with Croda to explore the potential of using these to replace petrochemical derived products in the company's portfolio of ingredients being supplied across a range of industrial sectors. Based on proof of concept work, it is clear there is huge potential. The challenge is that many of these terpene based natural products are not available at commercial scale as they are currently only available in relatively small amounts from the plants that produce them. This project will address this challenge by establishing the biosynthetic route to selected terpenoids that perform in Croda's proprietary platforms and by using a combination of synthetic/engineering biology and industrial biotechnology develop new production platforms that will allow commercial scale-up and development of new biobased products. Croda already have expertise in fermentation based scale-up in so called heterologous host platforms that will complement the gene discovery and laboratory scale engineering of host platforms that will be performed at the University of York. Early leads have already been identified for the Crop Care sector which could have a major impact on the sustainability of agriculture.