EFKO and the Federal Research Center for Nutrition and Biotechnology will collaborate on research on potential biotechnology applications in space. The relevant agreement was signed in Moscow at the Deep Food Tech 2025 international conference.

The focus of the study is to prove the hypothesis of possible sustainable food reproduction in space conditions, specifically, the potential of precision fermentation spaceward.

EFKO has already been utilizing this technology to produce the sweet-tasting protein brazzein and for the biosynthesis of fats. Here, scientists alter regular food yeast and "train" them to create products with specific characteristics, such as exact replicas of vegetable oils or super-sweet fruits from tropical plants. The same technology is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry for insulin production.

It involves developing alternative methods to obtain familiar products when resources are limited, regarding raw materials, infrastructure, and capacity footprint – the same parameters that restrict humans from space exploration.

“Arranging meals in space sets numerous challenges and limitations, –Aleksey Kambarov, Director of the Research Institute of Food Concentrate Industry and Special Food Technology – a branch of the Federal Research Center for Nutrition and Biotechnology shared at the conference. As part of the research, we aimed to assess the possibility of developing a technology for the self-sufficient production of proteins and fats to supply food for astronauts.”

“Space is captivating due to the extreme demands placed on technology developers, – says Sergey Ivanov, EFKO Executive Director. – That’s where challenges that don’t have no easy cure arise. Throughout history, humanity has addressed the issue of food twice, first by domesticating grains and then by animals. We live in an era of microbial domestication. Precision fermentation technology is unlikely to solve Earth’s starvation issues, but it certainly holds significant potential for applications in space. These are the hypotheses we will attempt to test with our colleagues."