Johan Robbens
Working on the Future of Food: Algae!
The world faces a major challenge: to feed everyone on earth, both today and in the future. For climate reasons alone, this requires a big shift: away from meat and towards, for example, algae. For the time being, though, consumers do not seem keen on this idea. Although Johan Robbens believes that with the right taste studies, this could change, and that we should be perfectly capable of producing algae with an optimal (European) taste.
Johan Robbens holds a PhD in biotechnology, and has worked in genomics, proteomics and (eco)toxicology over the past decades. He currently heads the Blue Biotech/Food Integrity unit at the Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. As a researcher there, he is working on the valorisation of marine resources, including the valorisation of algae as food and animal feed, and the valorisation of marine by-products such as shells for agricultural and industrial applications.