our Norwegian-German project LignoLIPP was presented at the Hannover Fair, together with our partner Bex-BioTec

This year, we were again invited to participate at the Hannover Fair, according to its own website “the most important international platform and hot spot for industrial transformation – with excellent innovations or unusual products”. This time, we were invited by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF, which intended to showcase the results of its “Bioeconomy in the North” projects. In this European programme, our group as well as the start-up biotech company Bex-BioTec from our alumna Rebecca Melcher have been involved on the German side. We are collaborating with the group of Dr. Volha Shapaval from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Aas, an expert on oleogenic mucoromycetes, a very special group of fungi with the potential of producing huge amounts of precious lipids. As these fungi are also known to naturally produce chitosans, we jointly aim to improve the biotechnological potential of these fungi by optimising fermentation conditions to yield maximum lipid and chitosan production. This has been successful, and we are currently analysing the fungal chitosan, both structurally and functionally as a plant biostimulant. Our small poster at the BMBF stand was surprisingly well visited, we made a number of very interesting contacts, and we are looking forward to the collaborative projects that will hopefully develop from these contacts. The idea is always to find new application fields for these novel, truly natural, vegan chitosans!