plant – Agrifood Innovation Event

15/11/2022

Protein plant factories: producing and steering soybean protein content in indoor farming

In rich countries there is an increasing consumer interest towards plant-based protein compared to animal ones, due to health and environmental concerns as well as animal welfare. Nowadays, Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), such as greenhouses and vertical farming, are already being used to produce highly nutritious crops with improved functional ingredients (e.g., minerals, vitamins), that are beneficial to human health.

10/11/2022

Sustainable and healthy proteins

Within the Sustainable Food Initiative (SFI), we identified four topics of interest and relevance for the protein transition to work on in a collaborative approach.

Towards a global improvement of a healthy protein –> ingredient –> product
Whole material approach – mild fractionation
Whole chain approach
Techno functional properties of plant & cellular proteins and use of predictive & automated screening approaches
These will be elaborated upon in more detail in the presentation.

04/11/2022

3D printing technology and how it can help create plant based foods

Since the start of 3D Food Printing it has been used to create products with ever increasing complexity.
The possibility to deposit materials in specific amounts and positions and thus create unique material compositions and distributions within a single product is what is unique about 3D printing. As such, this allows for the creation of products with very specific properties, including structure and texture. The learnings from the past decade form the basis for the creation of novel plant-based food products.

31/10/2022

Plant-based food structured by 3D printing: Opportunities and challenges

To provide consumers with high-quality plant-based food, not only is the nutritional content of importance, but also the texture and taste. Many animal-derived food products have a hierarchical structure which can be crucial for the texture, and subsequently, a unique biting experience. This drives the development of various technologies to create plant-based food structures that are similar to that of e.g. meat, fish, or cheese. One of the many promising techniques is 3D food printing.