Nanotechnology Applications for Food and Bioprocessing Industries Luis E. Trujillo 1* , Rodrigo Ávalos 1 , Silvana Granda 1 , Luis Santiago Guerra 1 and José M. País-Chanfrau 2 1 Industrial Biotechnology and Bioproducts Research Group, Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas (ESPE), CENCINAT, Ecuador 2 Universidad Técnica del Norte (UTN), Avenida 17 de julio, 5-21 y General José María Córdoba. CP 199, Ibarra, Imbabura, Ecuador * Corresponding author: Luis E. Trujillo, Industrial Biotechnology and Bioproducts Rearch Group, Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas (ESPE), Ecuador, Tel: +81-3-5800-8653; Fax: +81-3-3811-6822; E-mail: letrujillo3@espe.edu.ec Received date: March 18, 2016; Accepted date: May 10, 2016; Published date: May 16, 2016 Copyright: © 2016 Trujillo LE, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Nanoscience is an emerging technology today with great application in different fields. Biocatalysts design, identification of different bacterial strains, monitoring the quality of food by different biosensors, food packaging with smart systems, active, intelligent and nano-encapsulation of bioactive food compounds are examples of some of these applications in the food industry. In this paper, some topics related to the potential of nanotechnology in the food industry are updated. In addition, some concerns about nanotechnology application in this popular industry are also discussed. Keywords: Nanotechnology; Bioprocessing industries; Bio sensors Introduction Food, food-biocatalists and bioprocessing industries face great challenges in order to develop and establish systems to develop high quality, safety foods, as well as feeds and other industrial goods, environmentally acceptable and in a sustainable way [1]. Recently, an ideal immobilized biocatalyst using calcium alginate beads was described for the industrial-scale production of invert sugar for food and beverages industry [2,3]. However, despite the advantages of currently used immobilization materials like calcium alginate, nanostructure materials exhibit, a higher catalytic eiciency over other traditional materials, greater surface reaction activity, strong adsorption ability, and thermal stability [4-6]. On the other hand, the use of nanostructure carriers increase life cycles of the biocatalyst thus allowing its reuse and reducing the bioprocess cost [7]. All these features are highly desired for industrial purposes. hermal stability increment was described in the case of Candida rugosa lipase immobilized on polylactic acid nanoparticles [8]. On the other hand, keratin, a non-food applied enzyme, also improved its stability by the use of a nanoscaled support [9]. According to these reports, we can assume that nanomaterials large surface area provides a better matrix for enzyme immobilization, improve the enzyme loading per nanoparticles mass unit and its catalytical properties. Not only the enzyme ield with application in food has pointed to nanotechnology, the food and beverage industry has also been pointed to nanomaterial applications. According to some authors, it is a newly emerging technology, predicted to continually increase [10] since more than 400 companies worldwide develop diferent applications of nanotechnology in food and food packaging [11]. Some institutes dedicated to the nano-market research for food and beverages, estimated that it will grow to $6.5 billion in 2013, $1 trillion by 2015 [12], and will grow with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.7% to reach about $15.0 billion in 2020 [13]. On the other hand, other economic studies carried by other institutions like the European Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, postulates that the use of nanomaterials in the food packaging market will reach $20 billion by 2020. his paper contributes to a broader understanding of the main applications of nanotechnology in food ields like biocatalists and food and feed industries by openly discuss these issues using balanced information and scientiic indings in a simple technical language. Materials and Methods We are not attempting to provide a comprehensive summary of analytical techniques used for nanotechniques applied to diferent research ields, thus, the goal of this report is to present a brief review of methods developed in our own and other laboratories and lessons gathered from our experiences that may be useful to other researchers. For this review, we used peer-reviewed, published papers that were identiied by electronic searches in Medline and Google Scholar. he search strategy included diferent combinations of key words such as nanotechniques, enzyme immobilization, nanotechnology in foods and feeds, nanomaterials, nanotechnology concerns, etc. No language limits were applied. Search period was not longer than 10 years. In addition, we performed manual searches in reference lists from speciic own or other published papers to ind additional pioneer and older studies that could have been overlooked by the electronic search. Equipments, microorganism and fed-batch fermentation, cell disruption to get enzymes of interest, preparation and storage of calcium alginate beads, enzyme assays for free and immobilized enzymes, protein and carbohydrate analysis were conducted as described in our previous papers [2,3]. Nanotechnology Today he use of new technologies based on nanomaterials created great expectation and interest since the past century [14]. Nanotechnology is considered nowadays an interdisciplinary ield that works tightly with other scientiic disciplines like physics, chemistry, biology as well as engineering. Working at the nanoscale level is exiting because this nano level ofers diferent physical, chemical, and biological properties of structures and systems to those displayed by its macro-scale similar due to the interactions of individual atoms and molecules. his means Biology and Medicine Trujillo et al., Biol Med (Aligarh) 2016, 8:3 http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/0974-8369.1000289 Research Article Open Access Biol Med (Aligarh) Recent Advances in Biology & Nanotechnology ISSN:0974-8369 BLM, an open access journal