Novo Nordisk Foundation will support new open collaborative platform, Plant2Food, to accelerate the development of plant-based foods with up to €27 million ($26.9m) over the next five years.
The platform, Plant2Food, will include researchers and companies collaborating and exploring complex challenges within plant and food science and sharing new knowledge across sectors – without taking out patents on the results.
The knowledge created through the platform becomes available to everyone, so that more companies and researchers can benefit from the same knowledge. The aim is to accelerate the overall development of new plant-based foods and to optimize collaboration across the various sectors within plant and food science.
Plant2Food platform
Novo Nordisk says it is necessary to convert a big part of the food production to plant-based foods if we want to make the most appropriate use of our agricultural land as well as being able to feed a growing world population.
The company believes the key to accelerating this transition is developing a greater selection of tasty, nutritious and sustainable plant-based food products that are also affordable to consumers.
Claus Felby, senior vice president of biotech at the Novo Nordisk Foundation, said: “We need to rapidly develop foods that can feed a growing world population without over-utilizing the planet’s resources.
A unique opportunity according to Novo Nordisk
“Plant2Food creates a unique opportunity to make Denmark a leader in developing plant-based foods and ensure that we leverage the huge potential already existing in Denmark’s research community and companies and build networks with the best international experts in the field.”
Plant2Food will be an open innovation in science platform focusing on open research collaboration. Novo Nordisk said the universities and companies joining the platform will agree to publish all results from the open research projects and waive any claim to intellectual property rights.
The company says it will enable researchers and companies to co-develop project ideas and to accelerate projects faster by starting them immediately when a research group and a company agree to explore an idea. The open approach also gives everyone the opportunity to further develop the results and potentially use them for commercial purposes.
Novo Nordisk funds
Marie Louise Conradsen, head of open innovation in science at Aarhus University, which is hosting Plant2Food, said: “This task is too complex for a single research group or company to solve alone. In Plant2Food, we want to crunch the value chain so that both researchers and companies can derive input from unexpected sources and thereby create solutions that would otherwise not be readily available.”
In addition to Aarhus University, other university partners in Plant2Food are the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark and Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands.
As partners, the four universities will have access to the funds allocated for research, which make up the predominant share of the grant from the Foundation. The funds will be used to explore challenges defined in collaboration with industry.
Plant-based mince
Plant2Food will focus on developing basic knowledge about the properties of crops and how they can be used in food products. This knowledge can subsequently be used further up the value chain to develop nutritious products that are attractive to consumers.
Plant-based mince is an example of how the processing of crops is important for the finished product. Opening a pack of plant-based mince that emits a strong odor of sulfur is hardly a positive consumer experience. Basic knowledge about crops and how to reduce or block the components that emits bad odor in the finished product is crucial.
Food & Bio Cluster Denmark is the fifth partner in Plant2Food and will strongly focus on how to translate the research into practice in the companies. This cluster represents small and large companies, knowledge institutions and other organizations working within the food and bioresources sector in Denmark. Food & Bio Cluster Denmark will link researchers and industry in Plant2Food, so that the research carried out by the universities is disseminated and translated into practice in the companies.
Danish food industry
Food & Bio Cluster Denmark is already talking to a large number of companies that have expressed a need for new and long-term solutions.
Director Lars Visbech Sørensen, said: “The food industry is pursuing new, innovative solutions within plant-based foods to meet a growing market. For example, there is a high demand for new ingredients that are grown in Denmark and can contribute to an improved taste experience.
“This is precisely why we need research into new ingredients and varietal development of existing protein crops that have good cultivation characteristics in the Danish climate. An improved ingredient base can contribute to the whole plant-based food industry becoming a new position of strength for the Danish food industry.”