Science, technology, and innovation in the dairy sector

In this article, we explore why dairy science, technology, and innovation will for the foreseeable future remain important, and some of the future trends we can expect in the field. Given the nutrient richness and density of milk, its ubiquitous production and utility of use to produce foods and food ingredients, dairy will almost certainly continue to play an important role in diets and the global food system. Annual milk production at over 900 billion litres represents approximately 8% of total food biomass but has a disproportionate contribution to global nutrient provision. The value of the global dairy market will reach over $860 billion in 2024, employing approximately 240 million people, and supporting the livelihoods of up to one billion. The importance and long history of dairy has fuelled a vast amount of research in dairy science and technology with hundreds of thousands of papers published in the field. Given the amount of existing dairy science and technology is there anything significant left to be done? However, with advances in numerous other fields such as materials, biology and biochemistry, analytical technology, computing technology, etc., the opportunities in dairy science and technology also advance. Future innovations in the dairy sector will include those relating to environmental science and technology, the food matrix, foods tailored to diets for life stages and lifestyles, developments based on our expanding knowledge of microbiomes, and new opportunities from the use of AI. Dairy is the target for technology-enabled disruption by those looking to produce substitute products. Some of the technologies to produce dairy alternatives will feature in the future of dairy innovation but the impact is more likely to complement rather than disrupt the dairy sector.