Agrauxine Experts – Pierre GRAMMARE

What is Metaspora Solid State Fermentation?

Metaspora Solid State Fermentation is the production department of Agrauxine by Lesaffre, located in Loches (France – 37600), specialized in biomass production of filamentous fungi and bacteria.  The main activity of Metaspora is to deliver pure spores or formulated products to Agrauxine by Lesaffre and the biocontrol industry. Our challenge is to continuously deliver quality product, i.e viable spores. Today we serve 24 customers in 21 countries and the demand is growing +28%/ year.

In your role as Head of Metaspora Solid State Fermentation, what is your expertise?

I’ve been working in Solid State Fermentation (SSF) for over 30 years and met a large panel of challenges, from building new facilities to retrofitting existing plants and from starting new Solid State Fermentation project to consolidate on going production. My role is to develop a sustainable business based on Solid State Fermentation. Today the main pillar of Metaspora activity is biocontrol but there are new opportunities knocking at the door. Various businesses, like feed or food industries, are interested in the Solid State Fermentation advantages and possibilities.

Could you tell us more about the expertise of Metaspora and the advantages of solid state fermentation?

The Solid State Fermentation business is adapted to biocontrol by producing alive microorganisms which are controlling plant pests and diseases. To get alive spores of fungi, Metaspora is focusing on gently treating the products by keeping mesophilic temperatures at any stage of the production and low level of mechanical processing. High level of hygiene and continue air quality control are key in the success.

Metaspora is producing spores of beauveria and metarhizium as actives in bioinsecticide products but is mainly involved in Trichoderma spores production which are used as biofungicides. Each strain of Trichoderma is specific and requires its own growing parameters. To answer this variability, Metaspora implemented a robust staged-gate approach for industrialization of the various isolate.

Beside the manufacture of alive microorganisms, the Solid State Fermentation is also a very good tool to obtain other type of products. You may use it for production of molecules of interest or secondary metabolites extracted from a fungi biomass.

And also, the third angle to look at Solid State Fermentation, is the transformation of the substrate by a microorganism. In that case, the final status of the substrate is the target.

Do you have in mind a contribution you are particularly proud of since you work at Agrauxine by Lesaffre?

I started to work at Agrauxine by Lesaffre in 2014. These 8 years were mainly used to retrofit the factory with a vision to get a performant and adapted unit in Solid State Fermentation for biocontrol. Today, Metaspora is one of the most advanced entity in this business and our customers flag the quality and the consistency of our production as the key factor to continue making business with us.

To continue answering this demand, Metaspora is, nowadays, busy connecting brand new probes in various area of its production to collect and record data with a clear goal of reinforcing reproducibility in its fermentation recipes.