Potatoes typically contain just 2% protein by weight and are not grown as a protein crop. By growing them in cell culture, Israeli startup ReaGenics has increased that figure to 31%, and believes it can get to 40%, potentially opening up new markets for a protein it claims has significant advantages over pea and soy.
ReaGenics is one of a handful of startups growing high-value ingredients via plant cell culture. Rather than using sunlight, water, and soil to nurture fully-grown plants, firms in this space grow plant cells indoors in bioreactors fed on sugars, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients.
For some ingredients, this is underpinned by sustainability arguments: Why use large amounts of agricultural land, water and energy to nurture fully-grown plants when you’re only interested in one small part of the plant?
For others, plant cell culture can ensure a consistent supply of botanicals with supply chains increasingly threatened by climate change and unpredictable weather, political instability, adulteration, disease, and heavy metals and pesticides from soil. It also offers the promise of rapid, consistent, and controlled production of plant compounds with no pesticides.
For potatoes, says ReaGenics cofounder and chairman Dr. Michael Kagan, switching to plant cell culture can enable a dramatic increase in protein production.
“Not all potato varieties can be made into tissue culture,” he told AgFunderNews. “But we managed to do it with a select few, and when we optimized conditions for the cells to grow, we discovered that the concentration of the proteins in the cells is far higher. And then by applying different stress conditions (temperature, media etc) you can get it even higher, and this is all non GMO, with the full spectrum of amino acids that you would find in a [regular] potato [grown in soil].”
The market opportunity
Right now, potato protein is a byproduct of starch production. Dutch firm Avebe is the best-known player in the market with a branded protein called Solanic, while UK-based potato supplier Branston is entering the market this year.
That said, given the small quantities available and challenging economics, potato protein does not, yet, play a meaningful role in the human food market, said Kagan.
“At the moment, the main market is for animal feed, although the protein is very close to animal proteins such as egg and casein when it comes to nutrition and functionality. It is highly soluble and has gelling, foaming, emulsification, binding, texturizing and stabilizing properties, plus it is non-allergenic, which makes it very attractive to food formulators if the availability is there and the price is right. It has a PDCAAS (protein digestibility) score of 0.99 [with 1 being the gold standard].”
He added: “It is also white colored with no unpleasant smell or aftertaste you need to cover up, which is not the case with most plant proteins, plus it has a very small environmental footprint.”
According to Kagan, ReaGenics has been “approached by a number of big companies” interested in exploring potato protein for a variety of applications from plant-based meat analogs to plant-based milks. Other areas of interest include fries and potato chips made from potato paste (think Pringles) with higher protein content that doesn’t negatively impact taste.
Another area of opportunity is products for people with acute malnutrition, said Kagan. “At the moment, the main proteins for these products are peanuts and whey, which are both major allergens. The other thing is that we could supply carbs as well as protein, as the potato biomass contains both.”
Is it scalable?
As for scalability, ReaGenics has tested its continuous production process in plastic and stainless steel bioreactor platforms that it has developed, he said. “But we are not going to build a massive production facilities for potato protein [in-house]. Instead we are in contact with a number of companies who are interested in creating factories that can produce potato biomass at scale under license. Our optimized bioreactor unit is between 4,000 to 10,000 liters. In parallel, we’re working on increasing the protein concentration. We think we can get to 40% without GMO, but nature has its limits.”
Asked about downstream processing costs, these will vary depending on the end product, he said, noting that some customers will want purified potato protein, while others may be interested in the whole biomass.
Regulatory path forward
From a regulatory perspective, he said, ReaGenics would likely have to go through the GRAS (generally recognized as safe process) in the US but does not anticipate big challenges as potato protein is a known quantity and ReaGenics is not using genetic engineering. In Europe, however, it would likely have to go through the novel foods process.
ReaGenics is working on a variety of ingredients grown via plant cell culture including cannabinoids, coffee, resveratrol, anthocyanins from purple maize, and more.
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