Biotechnology is “leading a transformation that is impacting human nutrition, human and animal health, industrial processes and green agri-food”, areas which this year will be marked by innovation “integrating sustainability, digitalisation and new ways of producing ingredients and foods”, advances the Scientific Director of the Biotechnology Area of the Eurecat technology center, Francesc Puiggròs.
In this regard, biotechnology will emerge in 2026 “as an application of traditional technologies that have been renewed and updated to open up new opportunities of innovation for companies in the production of specific food ingredients, such as casein and citric acid, which are already a reality today, as well as many others, positioning Eurecat well to address emerging challenges in health and nutrition”, highlights Francesc Puiggròs.
From his perspective, “the alternative protein market is evolving and, following the plant-based boost, is expanding towards sources such as single-cell microorganisms, insects and revalorised biomass, with environmental, economic and nutritional benefits”, so that “although acceptance is uneven, the trend is clearly upward”.
Artificial intelligence, omics technologies and food technology are jointly driving the development of ingredients and final food products through the automation of processes such as fermentation and extrusion, reinforced by new genomic tools applied to precision fermentation.
This combined advance “will make it possible in 2026 to obtain safer, more scalable and with more suitable nutritional profiles products than highly processed foods and of complex compositions”. From this perspective, “it remains to be seen how in 2026 regulatory advances with new genomic techniques, including genetic edition, applied to the development of crops that are more resistant to climate change, pests and reduced agrochemical requirements, and the ingredients derived from them, will materialise in the market”, specifies the Scientific Director of Eurecat’s Biotechnology Area.
In the field of biomedicine and health, genome sequencing technologies are entering a new stage of practical application. “An emerging challenge gaining increasing importance is their use in addressing cases of rare diseases that are difficult to diagnose or applying microbial DNA analysis as an alternative to traditional methods in critical situations such as the detection of sepsis”, notes Francesc Puiggròs. And, in all this and extended to general medicine, “the development of new tests based on biological markers that can be used directly in healthcare centres”, he adds.
For this reason, he anticipates that “one of the trends in research is to evolve towards platforms that combine different types of biological data derived from the full range of omics technologies, moving away from the separate study of each discipline”. In this sense, he specifies, “artificial intelligence helps to interpret this large volume of information, enabling more precise diagnostics and research”.
In this context, explains Eurecat’s Scientific Director, Daniel Casellas, “one of Eurecat’s key strengths is offering companies the ability to anticipate technological trends, with innovative, high-impact solutions, so that they can get ahead of market needs and deliver value to the economic and industrial fabric and to society as a whole, thanks to the vision of the centre’s multidisciplinary scientific team”.
