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Nowadays, most of these secondary metabolites have a variety of applications in the form of pharmaceuticals, dyes, food additives, enzymes, vitamins, etc. In view of the variety of applications, production of these compounds (biochemicals)atcommerciallevelrequirestheirproduction in bulk quantities, as quantities produced naturally are not sufficient. These compounds are usually produced at commercial level in a purified form through a series of steps covered under bioprocessing. For large scale production, where large volume (on an average 100–10,000 litres) of culture can be processed, the development of bioreactors was required. 10.1 H istorical P erspective After the breakthrough discovery of Penicillin and its role in killing bacteria by Alexander Fleming in 1928, the significance of products from biological systems was well understood. Now, the challenge before the scientific/ research community was to enhance the production of penicillin. Production in larger amount for its use in treatment would obviously require a systematic process using the culture of biological entity in question, i.e., Penicillium species. The need of involvement of microbial physiologist and other life scientists and technologists was identified. This followed the identification of a number of products of living organisms and processes especially from microbes for application in bioprocessing. Many companies and government laboratories, assisted by different universities and institutions came together to take up this challenge and efforts were made to increase the production of penicillin. All this paved a way for the emergence of a new area of biological applications, which is now known as bioprocessing. Thus, bioprocessing involves biological or living systems or their components (e.g., enzymes, chloroplasts, etc.) and chemical engineering processes to obtain the desired products at commercial level as depicted in Fig. 10.4. At industrial or commercial stage, all bioprocesses are carried out in vessels called fermenter or bioreactor. We are also aware that after the advent of rDNA technology, 232 BiotechnologyXII Reprint 2025-26