Workshop: How can we improve crop quality valuable for the food industry by integrating breeding and management practices in varying environments?

Join this free webinar if you want to influence how our Plant2Food project idea can support your company in the transition from animal- to plant-based foods.

📅 Date: 17 January 2024 at 1-2PM

📍 Place: Online

 

We are looking for input, ideas, and company partners to form the project consortium, so our research is useful across the entire plant-based food sector.  

Agenda

• Short brief of the project idea "Understanding drivers of pea and faba bean product quality: from seed, to farm, to food" from Andries Temme (Wageningen University), Thomas Roitsch (University of Copenhagen) and Philipp Trenel (Danish Technological Institute)
• Round table discussion: what are your company needs and do you have input for the project aims and objectives
• Sum-up and next steps

 

Project idea

There is a growing desire among the European population to embrace a more plant-based protein diet. While this dietary transformation holds tremendous potential, it also presents significant challenges. Balancing the need for increased yields, the maintenance of superior nutritional attributes, and downstream processability, poses a complex puzzle that requires a comprehensive understanding of the intricate relationship between genetics, environment, field management, and desired crop characteristics.

We would like to team up to explore how to better integrate knowledge across the plant-based food value chain to ensure crop production with both high productivity and with the desired quality traits required by the food industry. The focus will be on the leguminous crops, peas and faba bean.

 

Objectives and what you can gain

The aim of this project is to deliver insight into how the primary sector can accommodate the requirements of raw material quantity and quality required from the food sector in a more targeted way.

• Develop a predictive model that captures the extent to which environmental factors, particularly drought and soil nutrient status, influence crop quality and quantity and how these properties are interrelated, improving predictability of crop performance. Map out overlap in genomic regions influencing response to the environment and traits related to quantity and quality, hereby identifying molecular markers to allow genetic improvement by breeding.
• Accelerate the research to on-field transition by developing tools to more rapidly scale and integrate findings from greenhouse studies to field environments. 

• Develop statistical analysis/models that support integration of multiple data types from field experiments to generate scientific documentation of agricultural treatments (targeted fertilizer, plant biologicals) efficacy on crop quantity and quality.

 

How can you contribute

We welcome all types of company contributions to the project – whether it be input at the workshop, letters of interest, letters of support or partnership (no membership free or pre-defined minimum or maximum contributions).

Some examples of input:

Breeders:

• To what extent is seed quality (protein content, amino acid composition, etc) a target in your breeding programs?
• Supply seed material

Growers:

• What environmental stresses are most important for your operations?
• Could you sell your crop at a premium if it has better quality characteristics?

Management technology providers:

• Supply fertilizer or biostimulants and assess treatment effects on key food quality parameters in the crop.

Processors:

• Which functional and/or nutritional quality parameters in the raw material are of relevance for your company?
• Do you have a preference for pea or faba-bean?

Food and nutritional science:

• Analysis to be determined depending on input from companies, however, handling of many samples at small scale is needed.

 

The consortium seeks funding for the project through Plant2Food.

You can read more about the idea here (you must have a user on Plant2Food's platform to have access).

If you have questions on the project idea, please contact:
Andries Temme andries.temme@wur.nl