Book excerpt: G.HAINNAUX Departement Milieu et Activites Agricoles, Centre ORSTOM, 911 Avenue d' Agropolis, B.P. 5045, 34032 Montpellier Cedex , France. Solid state fermentation, popularly abbreviated as SSF, is currently investigated by many groups throughout the world. The study of this technique was largely neglected in the past in European and Western countries and there is now a high demand for SSF, meaning in food, environment, agricultural, phannaceutical and many other biotechnological applications. It gives me satisfaction to note that the importance of this technique was realised at my department way back in 1975 since then, our team has put concentrated efforts on developing this technique. xvii Foreword Advances in Solid State Fermentation Foreword M. PUYGRENIER Agropolis Valorisation, Avenue d' Agropolis, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. On the name of the Scientific Community, I would like to express the wish that this International Symposium on SSF should be successful. Solid State Fermentation is part of biotechnology research. It consists on seeding solid culture medium with bacteria or fungi (filamentous or higher) and on producing, in this medium (solid components and exudates) metabolites and high value products. In fact, this process is very old. In older industries such the food and agricultural, this technique has been extensively used. An example of this is the production of pork sausages and Roquefort cheese. Pharmaceutical industry could make extensive use of SSF in the production of secondary metabolites of many kinds and development in this direction is soon expected.