According to The Announcement Of the Project Approval for 2012 National Engineering Research Centers(GKFJ No. 405, 2013) released recently by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Functional Food Engineering Research Center (NFFERC) from Jiangnan University (JU), based on the first-class disciplinary strength of Food Science and Technology, is singled out among 35 of its kind across China, becoming the first state-level engineering research centre of JU and is a breakthrough in JU’s scientific research.

The National Engineering Research Center (NERC) serves as a key part of National Sci-tech Development Project, a significant step for the development of scientific research capacity, and an important base for technological integration, innovation and re-innovation, and sci-tech achievement transfer, leading the grand mission of talent cultivation, technology innovation and industry orientation.

The construction of JU’s NFFERC will, on the basis of the research output of the present ministry-level Functional Food Engineering Research Center, focus on technology innovation and industrialization to solve the pervasive problems and find key factors in Functional Food creating, designing and manufacturing, and to meet the demand of large-scale development of Functional Food Industry.

It will cover four areas including “Conventional Foods’ Shape, “Health-care Food Manufacturing and its Whole-process Quality Control", "Tailored Food Developing and Manufacturing for the Certain Group of People", "Efficient Microbial Fermentation and Clean Production of Dietary Supplements", and "Food Functional Factors in Developing and Large-scale Manufacturing" , to undertake technology research, development, integration, transfer and industrialization and to create new competitive products with independent intellectual property rights. Therefore, China's Food Industry and its related areas will see a great leap in terms of its overall level and international competitiveness through the endeavors of JU’s NFFERC in the years to come.