Israeli Biotech Company Unveils Cell-Cultured Fruits To Reduce Bottlenecks In Supply Chain

Laboratory “Fraken Foods” are steadily being pushed and accepted more and more. And while Israel is involved in war that has not stopped the countries cutting-edge innovation, the latest being lab-grown fruits.

The concept is not unique to Israel’s Novella, Ltd., but is another firm leading the way into a new era of food for the future.

In September, The WinePress highlighted a company from New Zealand doing something similar, with identical claims of closing the gap of food shortages and helping to fight climate change.

For more on this Israel-based biotech company, Novella explained their ambitions in a recent press release:

Nutri-Tech start-up Novella, Ltd. unveils prototypes of its new line of berry-derived bioactives. Charting a new course in the nutraceuticals industry, the start-up is in the advanced stages of developing intact-cell berry compounds grown outside of the plant using novel, precision-controlled-environment technology. The cutting-edge platform will ease some of the bottlenecks in the supply for high-demand berry ingredients within the global supplement space. The company will exhibit at SupplySide West; October 23-27, 2023, Las Vegas, booth # 1328.

New pilot plant

Novella has opened a new facility comprising both its operational headquarters and a state-of-the-art pilot plant to accelerate the cultivation of whole-berry fruit cells from five varieties. Each variety is designed to meet distinct supplement market demands. Cultivation of the intact-cells in a precision precision-controlled environment preserves the integrity of the whole phytonutrients in the berries. Leading the project is Novella’s new CTO, Prof. Moshe Flaishman, Ph.D.

The main health benefit ascribed to berries as a general category has been their antioxidant capacity and related overall wellness attributes. But, thanks to research advances, we know much more about specific health condition categories that particular phytochemicals could help benefit, and which berries have higher concentrations of the compounds that confer these studied benefits. Novella will introduce a new supply channel for these high-value nutraceuticals currently in peak demand.

No berry waste

Berries cultivated solely for supplements on average require about 2,000 acres to yield just one ton of polyphenolic compounds. We have condensed that vast tract of agriculture into a 10K liter bioreactor that produces the same quantity of pure, high-value ingredients. This frees up valuable land for cultivating food crops and provides a host of other economic and environmental benefits, beginning with the complete elimination of waste.

Our method requires minimal land, energy, and water usage and exerts a minimal carbon footprint. We can produce high-quality ingredients at affordable prices, independently of climate fluctuations, logistical challenges, or social and political constraints.

Explains Itay Dana, co-founder and CBDO of Novella.

Novella’s proprietary cultivation platform takes a whole-cell approach to providing much sought-after nutraceutical ingredients and involves no extraction processes. The company screens the plant’s tissues to pinpoint the areas of the plant harboring the highest concentration of compounds. The selected cells (callus) are grown in a closed, controlled system that stimulate natural propagation. Growth is maintained at a cellular level without the need of the whole plant.

The cells are then transformed, without the need for solvents, into a nutritious, highly bioaccessible and potent powder that the gastrointestinal system can readily absorb.

We perform a one-time selection procedure, taking tissue from the skin and flesh of the berries while the fruit is in it most potent stage.

Continues Flaishman.

A berry-licious breakthrough

While Novella nurtures cells from various botanicals, the company has made significant progress in producing cell-grown, berry-derived compounds. By keeping cultivation at a cellular level, the start-up says it can maintain the berry’s natural complex of phytonutrients, including vitamins, minerals, and polyphenols, including much revered anthocyanins. Moreover, the cell wall serves as a natural form of encapsulation, protecting the actives from oxidation and ensuring maximum absorption in the body. “This means that we can also produce specific berry-derived ingredients by request,” adds Flaishman.

Polyphenols are powerful, yet volatile molecules that can experience losses during traditional extraction processes. Our non-extraction platform bypasses these deficits. The holistic approach harnesses the power of intact berry cells, guaranteeing the delivery of standardized, wholesome, and pesticide-free bioactives.

Concludes Dana.

About Novella

Novella was co-founded in 2022 by three experts from three distinct disciplines: Kobi Avidan, MA, chairman and CEO, Shimrit Bar-El, Ph.D., MBA CPO, and Itay Dana, B.Sc., MBA, global CBDO and marketing executive. Novella is opening a new chapter in climate-resilient environments through nutrient cultivation. The company leverages proprietary technology to grow nutritious, strictly non-GMO botanical ingredients while leaving the whole plant out of the equation. The start-up can grow any type of plant tissue in its controlled environment.

AUTHOR COMMENTARY

If you go back and read the report I did about the New Zealand company doing this, I cited a quote by Tim Pow, a Canterbury Blueberry grower, who perfectly said it best:

Lab grown fruit seems to be making a solution to a problem we don’t have. We have plenty of fruit to supply to the market.

What are we putting into these lab grown fruit to make them nutritional that we’re then putting another heap of stuff in there to keep them nutritional or to counteract that and that would be our biggest concern.

This is a delusional solution for a problem that does not exist. There is plenty of food to go around but a lot of it is wasted and not properly stored, especially considering Americans and other country’s insatiable lust for food and toxic garbage. And this same nonsense applies especially to meat and dairy.

Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.

Proverbs 23:3