Current European agricultural production systems are heavily dependent on protein imports, to cover mainly the nutritional needs for livestock animals and farmed fish, as well as for human consumption. Due to this dependency, European farming systems are fragile and vulnerable to rapid disruptions of supply chains. To tackle this issue, EU and particularly Mediterranean countries are in search of competent, sustainable, locally available alternative protein sources.

In this framework, the PRIMA project CIPROMED [«Circular and Inclusive utilisation of alternative PROteins in the MEDiterranean value chains»] aims to propose alternative protein sources for the Mediterranean food and feed value chain. Particularly, the ground-breaking objective of this PRIMA project is the integration of insect farming and microalgae cultivation in the Mediterranean supply chains, together with the management and valorisation of agri-industrial side-streams, as well as their transformation and fermentative bioconversion into valuable resources. The recovery of ingredients that are based on these natural resource-based substances will be performed through applying cascades of processes enabling the sequential extraction and fermentation of alternative ingredients. The suitability of the new protein ingredients in prototypes of food and feed, will be demonstrated in order to provide validated food and feed products, assured by a systemic LCA-based sustainability assessment. To achieve these goals, CIPROMED aims to adjust novel protein production to the unique Mediterranean conditions, creating a new, socio-economically feasible and environmentally sustainable alternative protein production system located in Mediterranean countries.

This research is supported by the EU-PRIMA program project CIPROMED (Prima 2022 – Section 1).

Cipromed 1st Newsletter

CIPROMED-Webseite

Cipromed Brochure

Cipromed Leaflet

CIPROMED press release