Process Development - Determination of the optimum conditions for fermentation, e.g., medium requirements, aeration, agitation, temperature, pH, duration, etc., using a microbe producing a metabolite of interest is called process development.

Considerations of cost, labour, time and space make it mandatory to carry out the process development in three distinct steps:

(i) laboratory process development using flasks,
(ii) scaling up using small to medium fermenters and, finally,
(iii) production scale fermentation experiments.