WINNIPEG — Canola meal is sold into the animal feed market at discounted prices but a University of Saskatchewan engineering professor hopes to change those economics by extracting key nutrients from the meal that can be used in fermentation and food processing.
Bishnu Acharya, Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture chair in bioprocess engineering, is being honoured for his efforts to increase the value of canola meal.
Mitacs, an organization that supports Canadian innovation, has recognized Acharya with an outstanding research leadership award.
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“Acharya is leading a research effort to turn canola meal into a low-cost, nutrient-dense feed for microbes used in fermentation. This is the fastest growing segment of the North American biotechnology sector aimed at supporting new foods, beverages, medicines and other applications,” says a Nov. 19 Mitacs press release.
Precision fermentation has become a hot area of research within the world of food processing and production.
On its website, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization defines it as a “process that utilizes microorganisms such as bacteria, yeast, or fungi to produce specific target products such as proteins or vitamins.”
Florian Schattenmann, chief technology officer of Cargill, is paying close attention to precision fermentation and what it could mean for food manufacturing.
“How do you use, say, glucose as a starting material and make target molecules (for food ingredients),” he said last month in Minneapolis, at the Reuters Transform Food & Agriculture conference.
The microbes used in precision fermentation need a source of food, or a medium, to do their work. Extracts from canola meal could displace yeast as the source of energy, says SaskCanola, which is funding Acharya’s research.
“With $500/ton of canola meal price … the cost per ton of canola meal extracts is $1,875/ton,” says the SaskCanola summary of Acharya’s project. “It is substantially lower than yeast extracts at $100,000 to $300,000/ton. The potential of replacing yeast extracts and other organic nutrition sources with CME (Canola Meal Extract) could disrupt the microbial media market.”
Mitacs also recognized Acharya for his research on oat hulls, a byproduct of oat milling.
In a pilot project, Acharya and his research team learned that oat hulls “contain good quality sugar and fibre that can be used as food additives to enhance the functional and nutritional value of common baked goods and other food items,” Mitacs says.
These uses in the food industry could significantly increase the value of oat hulls, which are typically used as livestock feed.
Acharya is one of eight Mitacs Innovation Award winners in Canada, selected from thousands of scientists who take part in Mitacs programs each year.
