Food technology with a healthy appetite for innovation

Food Technology

Food is as fundamental as it gets. And our relationship with it has changed with every year. Just ten years ago, most consumers were focused on eating a diet low in fat. Biotechnology was extremely limited in its application and considered somewhat dangerous. And few people knew what organic meant or why it mattered.

Today, the picture is one of heightened challenges. Food prices are soaring. Shortages have sparked unrest the world over. And every year, ten million people die of hunger and hunger-related diseases. At the same time, consumers are hungrier than ever for information about their food. They are better informed about nutrition and more aware of the environmental and societal impacts of everything they buy. In fact, according to an IBM Institute for Business Value (US) survey, two of every five U.S. and U.K. consumers say safety concerns dictate what food they will—and won't—purchase.

So what does IBM have to do with food? Food technology.
When Cyclone Nargis struck in May 2008, the people of Myanmar lost an estimated one third of their rice supply. Investigators in the United States were baffled by a mysterious salmonella outbreak that infected more than 1,300 people and cost tomato growers more than $100 million. These events illustrate the vulnerability of the food supply chain as well as the fragility of food supplies in general.

With innovative digital technology and powerful solutions, IBM is making sure food is traced properly as it passes though an increasingly complex global supply chain. IBM is also making that food heartier through biological research.

The future of food starts today.

Good grains

Rice is the main food staple of more than half the world's population. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 20% of the total food energy intake for every man, woman, and child in the world comes from rice. So what if we could make rice a stronger crop that is more nutritious?

First, we have to study the structures of the proteins that make rice itself. The Computational Biology Research Group at the University of Washington has developed state of the art software that does just that. But with 30,000 to 60,000 different protein structures, a couple or even a dozen computers couldn't take on this task. That's why the researchers plugged into IBM's World Community Grid.

With the processing power of 167 teraflops, the World Community Grid can harness the donated and otherwise unused power from nearly one million individual PCs. Using the grid, the project can be completed in less than two years-as opposed to over 200 years using more conventional computer systems.