Mil­lions in fund­ing to put pro­teins from agri­cul­tur­al side streams back on our plates

Every year, residues from agri­cul­tur­al crops are used for anim­al feed, bio­gas pro­duc­tion or oth­er low-value applic­a­tions. This is a missed oppor­tun­ity, as these residues are rich in nutri­tious pro­teins. Take rape­seed, the bright yel­low crop that brings a cheer­ful splash of col­our to the land­scape in spring. There is high demand for its oil, but the rape­seed cake left after press­ing is rarely used for human con­sump­tion. The same applies to parts of legume pro­cessing streams. ​“Around twenty per cent of these products is dis­carded because the col­our or shape is not quite right, or because of poor logist­ic­al coordin­a­tion in the sup­ply chain,” says Heidy den Besten, Per­son­al Pro­fess­or at Food Micro­bi­o­logy. She sees a major oppor­tun­ity here. Through the new pro­ject called Val­or­ising agri­cul­tur­al crop side streams into con­sumer foods (VASCO), she and dozens of part­ners aim to demon­strate that smart pro­cessing tech­no­lo­gies can turn these side streams into a new gen­er­a­tion of foods.

Modi­fy­ing prop­er­ties through fermentation

The pro­ject focuses on side streams from legumes, rape­seed and pota­toes. To turn these into new foods, the research­ers will use two tech­no­lo­gies, either sep­ar­ately or in com­bin­a­tion: pro­tein extrac­tion and fer­ment­a­tion. They use sus­tain­able sep­ar­a­tion tech­niques to extract valu­able pro­teins from the raw mater­i­als. ​“We will partly use dry frac­tion­a­tion, which is much more sus­tain­able than con­ven­tion­al wet extrac­tion,” explains Den Besten. The research­ers will also use bac­teria and fungi to trans­form the side streams through fer­ment­a­tion. Microor­gan­isms can not only remove undesir­able com­pounds, such as gluc­osi­no­lates and phyt­ic acid, but also improve the taste and aroma of the final product. Fur­ther­more, some bac­teria pro­duce vit­am­ins that are nor­mally found mainly in anim­al products, such as vit­am­in B12 and vit­am­in K2. By mak­ing smart use of these microor­gan­isms, the research­ers aim to increase the nutri­tion­al value of the products.

The research should lead to tan­gible products. Den Besten men­tions new ingredi­ents for meat altern­at­ives as an example, as well as spreads, snacks and fer­men­ted products sim­il­ar to tem­peh. For potato side streams, research­ers will even invest­ig­ate wheth­er they can grow fungi that are them­selves rich in pro­tein. The side stream would then serve as food for the fungi, with the fungal pro­tein sub­sequently used as an ingredi­ent in food products.

Because the con­sor­ti­um is focus­ing on products that are close to being mar­ket-ready, con­sumers will be involved from the very begin­ning of the devel­op­ment pro­cess. This way, they aim to find out what con­sumers want to eat, which product formats appeal to them and which con­cepts are there­fore most likely to suc­ceed in supermarkets.

Bring­ing the entire sup­ply chain to the table

The pro­ject brings togeth­er all the dif­fer­ent play­ers in the sup­ply chain. Pro­du­cers of side streams, ingredi­ent sup­pli­ers, food com­pan­ies, retail­ers, con­sumer research­ers and poli­cy­makers will work togeth­er to invest­ig­ate why many prom­ising innov­a­tions have yet to make it to the mar­ket. ​“Com­pan­ies are often only will­ing to invest once there is suf­fi­cient demand, while super­mar­kets will only stock products when they know there is a reli­able sup­ply,” Den Besten explains. The pro­ject part­ners will identi­fy the main bot­tle­necks and the changes needed to bring new products to mar­ket. Accord­ing to Den Besten, it is pre­cisely this com­bin­a­tion of tech­no­logy, con­sumer beha­viour and mar­ket applic­a­tion that makes the pro­pos­al so strong. ​“You need more than just research­ers,” she says. ​“We also need to bring pro­du­cers, retail­ers and poli­cy­makers togeth­er. That increases the chances of achiev­ing real change.”

Den Besten is there­fore par­tic­u­larly proud of the con­sor­ti­um she has man­aged to bring togeth­er. Four uni­ver­sit­ies, two uni­ver­sit­ies of applied sci­ences, three voca­tion­al edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions, nine com­pan­ies, a crop grow­ers’ cooper­at­ive, four net­work organ­isa­tions, a gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion and a European lob­by­ing organ­isa­tion are col­lab­or­at­ing on the pro­ject. In addi­tion to sci­entif­ic know­ledge, the pro­ject will pro­duce new teach­ing mater­i­als, an online course and oppor­tun­it­ies for know­ledge exchange for voca­tion­al, high­er pro­fes­sion­al and uni­ver­sity stu­dents. Dur­ing the pre­par­a­tions, Den Besten already saw that the part­ners com­ple­men­ted one anoth­er and worked well togeth­er. ​“If the pre­par­a­tion pro­cess is any indic­a­tion of how the pro­ject itself will go, it can only be a suc­cess.” Ulti­mately, she hopes the pro­ject will not only deliv­er new insights and products, but also serve as a blue­print for oth­er sup­ply chains. ​“We want to show how you can really get this trans­ition under­way. If this works for side streams from legumes, rape­seed and pota­toes, it could serve as an example for side streams from oth­er crops,” says Den Besten.