Sustainable food security - SMART PROTEIN

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Introduction

Smart Protein for a Changing World. Future-proof alternative terrestrial protein sources for human nutrition encouraging environment regeneration, processing feasibility and consumer trust and acceptability

This H2020 project SMART PROTEIN aims to help build a future-proof protein supply by creating sustainable and nutritious alternative proteins. This is in direct response to some of the most urgent challenges faced by the planet, including climate change and global food security.

A total of 33 partners from industry, research, and academia across 21 different countries will collaborate on the project, which is led by the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences at University College Cork in Ireland. The project will run 4 years, from January 2020 until December 2023.


Project description

It is undeniable that protein is an indispensable part of the human diet, but the way we produce and consume it today presents many challenges, in terms of both global consumption patterns and their social, environmental and economic impacts. Providing a growing global population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems is therefore an immediate challenge. SMART PROTEIN aims to industrially validate and demonstrate innovative, cost-effective and resource-efficient, EU-produced, nutritious plant (fava bean, lentil, chickpea, quinoa) and microbial biomass proteins from edible fungi by upcycling side streams from pasta (pasta residues), bread (bread crust) and beer (spent yeast and malting rootlets) industries. The alternative SMART protein will be used for the production of ingredients and products for direct human consumption, through developing future-proofed protein supply chains with a positive impact on bio-economy, environment, biodiversity, human nutrition, food and nutrition security and consumer trust and acceptance. These priorities will be addressed through global partnerships forged with consortium members from Europe, North America, Israel, Thailand and New Zealand to develop and demonstrate a climate-smart, sustainable protein-food system for a healthy Europe. We will harness plant and microbial protein knowledge to significantly enhance the sustainability and resilience of a new European protein supply chain, improve professional skills and competencies, and support the creation of new jobs in the food sector and bioeconomy.


Objectives

SMART PROTEIN aims to industrially validate innovative, cost-effective and resource efficient, EU-produced, healthy plant proteins (fava bean, lentil, chickpea, quinoa) and microbial biomass proteins (MBS) (food-grade yeast and fungi) for the production of ingredients and products for direct human consumption, through developing future-proofed protein supply chains with a positive impact on bio-economy, environment, biodiversity, human nutrition, food and nutrition security and consumer acceptance. The specific objectives of SMARTPROTEIN are:


Role of Ghent University

Ghent University is mainly involved in the research activities related to consumer and sensory acceptance, as well as life cycle cost analysis. In particular, UGent will be responsible for the pan-European consumer survey and the consumer sensory study in Belgium, and contribute to the broad consumer trends and benchmarking study, as well as behavioral intervention experiments on plant-based food choice. In addition, UGent will be participant in sustainability analysis, with a particular focus on stakeholder analysis of selected protein value chains.


Website

To be announced

 

Contact

Department of Agricultural Economics
Prof. Xavier Gellynck
  

Prof. Hans De Steur
Phone number: 09 264 59 45