Starch Pros

December 03^rd 2021

AKFP introduces waxy potato starches for North American food industry.

American Key Food Products now offers native waxy potato starch and pregelatinized native waxy potato starch to the North American food industry. Made in Germany by the Emsland Group, both starches are over 99% amylopectin and may be used in applications such as fruit ållings, baked foods, soups and sauces, salad dressings, condiments, snacks and meat alternatives.

The native waxy potato starch is a cook-up starch. The pregelatinized native waxy potato starch is a cold-swelling pregelatinized starch. Both are high-viscosity starches. They have a neutral flavor profile. The high-gelatinization levels bring about expansion, creaminess, smoothness and mouthfeel, according to Closter-based AKFP. They are used in binding and thickening, imparting a shiny, clear appearance, new textures, high viscosity and extended shelf life.

“This high level of amylopectin is achieved by the breeding of a potato variety specially for this
purpose, using traditional techniques, not genetic modification,” said Ivan Sarda, president of AKFP. “These native starches offer excellent performance characteristics with the added beneåt of being non-GMO, gluten-free and clean-label friendly. Such innovative starches are a natural addition to our portfolio of ingredients that support the better-for-you lifestyle choices many consumers seek today.”

Source: https://innovationsfood.com/akfp-introduces-waxy-potato-starches-high-amylopectin-gluten-free-and-non-gmo/

November 29^th 2021

DSM to acquire Vestkorn Milling to accelerate growth in plant-based proteins.

Royal DSM, a global purpose-led science-based company, announces today that it has signed an agreement to acquire Norwegian company Vestkorn Milling, one of Europe’s leading producers of pea- and bean-derived ingredients for plant-based protein products, for an enterprise value of €65m.

Vestkorn Milling is well-positioned in the buoyant alternative protein market, supplying proteins, starches and dietary fibers for plant-based foods, pet food and animal feed. The company has 55 employees and is based in Tau on the south-west coast of Norway.

Patrick Niels, Executive Vice President of DSM’s Food & Beverage division, commented on the acquisition: “We very much look forward to welcoming Vestkorn Milling and their team to DSM. Increasingly, food and beverage producers around the world are looking to partners who can offer an integrated portfolio of ingredients, expertise, and solutions to help them differentiate and get to market fast. This is especially important in the highly dynamic meat alternatives space, where consumer and societal expectations around authentic taste, texture, and nutritional profile, as well as climate impact, are becoming more and more sophisticated.”

Aslak Lie, CEO of Vestkorn Milling, added: “Through the cooperation with DSM we have taken a huge step towards becoming a global leader of pulse-based ingredients. Over the past years we have significantly expanded our business and market. With DSM, we have got a long-term oriented owner that will fuel further growth and expansion. We are thrilled by this opportunity, and we look forward to being a part of the DSM team.”

The acquisition is a further step in DSM’s strategy to build an alternative protein business and will provide synergy with DSM’s innovative CanolaPRO™ rapeseed protein isolate, which will commercially launch next year.

Vestkorn Milling’s proteins, starches and dietary fibers are highly complementary to DSM’s broad offering to companies developing plant-based food and beverages, which includes vitamins, algal lipids and minerals to improve nutritional value; texturizing hydrocolloids; and flavors and yeast extracts as well as enzymes to improve protein taste and functionality.

The combination will furthermore help DSM deliver on its Food System Commitments to reach 150 million people with delicious, nutritious and sustainable plant-based protein foods by 2030.

Subject to customary conditions, the transaction is expected to close in Q4 2021.

Source: https://www.dsm.com/corporate/news/news-archive/2021/36-21-dsm-to-acquire-vestkorn-milling-to-accelerate-growth-in-plant-based-proteins.html

November 24^th 2021

Royal Avebe performance price at 93.30 euro.

Royal Avebe today announced its performance price of 93.30 euro for the 2020/2021 financial year. The growing acreage of starch potatoes, especially outside the Netherlands, led to pressure on the prices of native starch this year. Rising costs caused by the corona crisis also depressed the performance price. This performance price is partly due to the strategic direction following two years in which the performance price benefited from a lower market supply and therefore higher prices for native starch.

Growing year 2020 was marked by better growing conditions for starch potatoes compared to previous years. This was also the case in other European countries, where the acreage of starch potatoes also increased considerably. This higher market supply exerted downward pressure on prices for native potato starch and protein for animal feed. This ultimately resulted in a performance price of 93.30 euro. The performance price is the Cooperative’s key financial indicator. It combines the cooperative result and the potato revenues. The cooperative result totals 9.2 million euros.

Avebe’s strategy is to create more value through innovative products rather than bulk products. In recent years, the demand for innovative, vegetable-based products has increased, and Avebe’s potato starch and protein products play a vital role in this. This is illustrated by replacing animal protein with vegetable potato protein in dairy products while retaining the same nutritional and functional value. The capacity for vegetable protein has expanded considerably in recent years. Avebe invested heavily in innovation and sustainability in the financial year 2020/2021. This included planned investments that had been postponed in the previous fiscal year due to COVID-19.

The coronavirus once again caused many uncertainties. The number of infections among employees rose. There was also reduced availability of transport and containers to get products from A to B. Despite that, we managed to get all the products to our customers, sometimes with some delays. The cooperative was also faced with rising costs of transport, energy, raw materials and packaging materials. David Fousert, new chairman of the board of Royal Avebe: “Our members are also facing substantial cost increases to grow starch potatoes. It is therefore imperative that we, as Avebe, remain on track to continuously increase the performance price. And we do this through our strategy for high-quality products. Despite the impact of the corona crisis and market conditions, we are still on track to achieve our strategic goals including a 100 euro performance price by the financial year 2024/2025,” said David Fousert.

Source: https://www.avebe.com/news/royal-avebe-performance-price-at-93-30-euro/

November 06^th 2021

Chinese company picks Grand Forks North Dakota for manufacturing plant.

The Chinese company Fufeng has chosen Grand Forks (ND) as the site of a manufacturing facility that city officials said Saturday could be the largest private sector investment in the community’s history.

Fufeng Group Ltd. picked an approximately 370 acre (150 hectare) site in Grand Forks’ agri-business park. The facility is expected to initially require 25 million bushels of corn annually, the city’s announcement said,

The announcement did not give the size of the investment or specify which products will be made there. Fufeng makes products for the animal nutrition, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, health and wellness, oil and gas, and other industries. It’s a leading producer of xanthan gum. This will be its first U.S.-based manufacturing facility, the city said.

“Adding value to our corn and other raw commodities is critical to North Dakota’s long-term economic success, and this value-added project represents a huge opportunity for producers and workers in the Grand Forks area and our entire state,” Gov. Doug Burgum said in a statement.

Construction is expected to employ up to 1,000 workers for up to three years, said Keith Lund, president and CEO of the Grand Forks Region Economic Development Corporation. “Once operational we anticipate 233 direct jobs and 525 indirect jobs will be created, for a total of over 750 new jobs in our region,” he said.

Fufeng officials are planning to visit Grand Forks later this month to meet with state and local leaders to continue the due diligence process and work toward finalizing a development agreement.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/business-north-dakota-grand-forks-fufeng-group-ltd-0c56dbdae6f35b999674b78410463562

September 23^rd 2021

Cell-free chemoenzymatic starch synthesis from carbon dioxide.

Chinese scientists recently reported a de novo route for artificial starch synthesis from carbon dioxide (CO2) for the first time. Relevant results are published in Science on Sept. 24.

The new route makes it possible to shift the mode of starch production from traditional agricultural planting to industrial manufacturing, and opens up a new technical route for synthesizing complex molecules from CO2.

Starch is the major component of grain as well as an important industrial raw material. At present, it is mainly produced by crops such as maize by fixing CO2 through photosynthesis. This process involves about 60 biochemical reactions as well as complex physiological regulation. The theoretical energy conversion efficiency of this process is only about 2%.

Strategies for the sustainable supply of starch and use of CO2 are urgently needed to overcome major challenges of mankind, such as the food crisis and climate change. Designing novel routes other than plant photosynthesis for converting CO2 to starch is an important and innovative S&T mission and will be a significant disruptive technology in today’s world.

To address this issue, scientists at the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology (TIB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) designed a chemoenzymatic system as well as an artificial starch anabolic route consisting of only 11 core reactions to convert CO2 into starch.

This route was established by a “building block” strategy, in which the researchers integrated chemical and biological catalytic modules to utilize high-density energy and high-concentration CO2 in a biotechnologically innovative way.

The researchers systematically optimized this hybrid system using spatial and temporal segregation by addressing issues such as substrate competition, product inhibition, and thermodynamical adaptation.

The artificial route can produce starch from CO2 with an efficiency 8.5-fold higher than starch biosynthesis in maize, suggesting a big step towards going beyond nature. It provides a new scientific basis for creating biological systems with unprecedented functions.

“According to the current technical parameters, the annual production of starch in a one-cubic-meter bioreactor theoretically equates with the starch annual yield from growing 1/3 hectare of maize without considering the energy input,” said Cai Tao, lead author of the study.

This work would open a window for industrial manufacturing of starch from CO2.

“If the overall cost of the process can be reduced to a level economically comparable with agricultural planting in the future, it is expected to save more than 90% of cultivated land and freshwater resources,” said MA Yanhe, corresponding author of the study.

In addition, it would also help to avoid the negative environmental impact of using pesticides and fertilizers, improve human food security, facilitate a carbon-neutral bioeconomy, and eventually promote the formation of a sustainable bio-based society.

TIB has focused on artificial starch biosynthesis and CO2 utilization since 2015. To carry out such demand-oriented S&T research, all kinds of resources for innovation have been gathered together and the integration of “discipline, task and platform” has been strengthened to achieve efficient coordination of research efforts.

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh4049

September 17^th 2021

Agrana announces €25m investment in Austrian plant capacity.

Austrian food company Agrana has announced a €25 million investment in additional capacity at its three starch factories.

The Agrana plant in Gmünd began receiving deliveries of starch potatoes last month, while wet corn processing has been underway in Aschach/Donau and Pischeldorf since 15 September.

Agrana’s plant in Gmünd is Austria’s only potato starch factory and the current investment for the existing site stands at €12 million to expand its drying facilities. The investment involves building a spraying tower – a drying plant for infant formula, maltodextrin and dried glucose syrup – in addition to installing a drum-drying plant for dehydrated potato products.
The starch potato campaign in Gmünd is estimated to last around 130 days, with completion in early January. Approximately 250,000 metric tons have been contracted for this coming season.

Agrana is currently investing around €13 million at its Aschach site to expand its capacity for processing special corn varieties. A total of around 500,000 metric tons of corn – with the gradual introduction of more special corn varieties such as waxy and organic corn – are processed annually at the Aschach plant.

Source: https://www.agrana.com/en/pr/all-press-releases/news-detail/campaign-start-processing-at-starch-factories-well-underway

September 15^th 2021

France’s Tereos to sell Chinese starch business to Wilmar’s YKA.

French sugar group Tereos is selling its minority stake in two Chinese starch joint ventures to Yihai Kerry Arawana Holdings (YKA), the Chinese subsidiary of Singapore’s Wilmar International, the group said on Wednesday.

French sugar group Tereos is selling its minority stake in two Chinese starch joint ventures to Yihai Kerry Arawana Holdings 300999.SZ (YKA), the Chinese subsidiary of Singapore’s Wilmar International WLIL.SI, the group said on Wednesday.

It has been reported in June that Tereos, the world’s second largest sugar maker in volume, was in advanced talks with Wilmar to sell its minority stake in their joint activities as part of a wider shift in strategy after a change in top management late last year.

“Tereos cooperative group announced its intent to refocus on its three main activities and reduce its debt,” Tereos said in a statement.

“In this context, Tereos announces that it is divesting its 49% stakes in two Chinese starch joint ventures initiated in 2012 and 2013 to its joint venture partner, the YKA Group,” it added.

Tereos has activities in sugar, alcohol and starch markets. It is one of the largest producers of ethanol in Brazil.

A company spokesperson declined to give financial details of the agreement.

The transaction with YKA Group is subject to antitrust authorities’ approval, Tereos said.

Tereos reported a debt of 2.7 billion euros ($3.2 billion) at the end of June, for annual sales of around 4.3 billion euros.

Source: https://tereos.com/en/our-news/

August 31^st 2021

Increasing sugar availability for oil synthesis.

A team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has bred a plant that produces more oil by manipulating the availability of sugar for oil synthesis. The team, led by BNL’s John Shanklin, achieved these results in using leaves of the fast-growing plant Arabidopsis, to mimic stem cells of plants like energycane and Miscanthus.

The work is part of a University of Illinois-led biosystems design project called Renewable Oil Generated with Ultra-productive Energycane (ROGUE) to engineer two of the most productive American biomass crops—energycane and Miscanthus—to accumulate an abundant and sustainable supply of oil that can be used to produce biodiesel, biojet fuel, and bioproducts.

The current project, “Mobilizing vacuolar sugar increases vegetative triacylglycerol accumulation,” builds on earlier work the Shanklin group published in 2017. That work showed that simultaneously impairing the export of sugar from leaves while blocking starch synthesis diverts sugars produced by photosynthesis towards fatty acid and oil synthesis.

“The novel aspect of this work was to minimize sugar accumulation in a large cellular storage compartment called the vacuole,” said Sanket Anaokar, a research associate at BNL. “Our approach was to block sugar movement into the vacuole and maximize its export. When these genetic manipulations were made to plants that are also blocked in starch synthesis, the cell channeled the extra sugar into oil.”

Anaokar went on to explain that an unexpected benefit of the approach the group took was that some of the remobilized sugar lessened the growth delays usually seen when the amount of exported sugar from the leaves and starches is decreased. The group will take what they’ve learned in their work with Arabidopsis and share it with other ROGUE researchers, speeding up the innovation cycle.

“It is far more difficult and time consuming to make multiple gene manipulations in energycane, whereas with Arabidopsis we can rapidly develop and test different genetic and molecular biology modifications to identify the most effective combinations,” said Shanklin, BNL Biology Department Chair and ROGUE researcher. “Once we validate an approach using our model system, we can move that knowledge over to fellow ROGUE researchers to deploy in the slowergrowing biomass crop plants.”

Shanklin’s research is just one of the ways ROGUE is working to increase the availability of sustainable biofuels and reduce the use of petrochemicals. “This proof of concept in the model plant Arabidopsis now shows us this is well worth moving into energycane and Miscanthus as a key step in making these viable sources of large amounts of oil for conversion into biodiesel and biojet fuel,” said ROGUE Director Stephen Long, Ikenberry Endowed University Chair of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology at Illinois’ Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.

Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2021.708902/full

August 24^th 2021

First CRISPR-edited wheat grown in Europe to be planted this autumn.

UK research institute Rothamsted Research, a pioneer of GM crop trials since the 1990s, has been granted permission by Defra to run a series of field trials of wheat that has been genome edited.

The Hertfordshire-based experiments will be the first field trials of CRISPR edited wheat anywhere in the UK or Europe.

The wheat has been edited to reduce levels of the naturally occurring amino acid, asparagine, which is converted to the carcinogenic processing contaminant, acrylamide, when bread is baked or toasted.

The ultimate aim of the project is to produce ultra-low asparagine, non-GM wheat, says project leader Professor Nigel Halford.

“Acrylamide has been a very serious problem for food manufacturers since being discovered in food in 2002. It causes cancer in rodents and is considered ‘probably carcinogenic’ for humans. It occurs in bread and increases substantially when the bread is toasted, but is also present in other wheat products and many crop-derived foods that are fried, baked, roasted or toasted, including crisps and other snacks, chips, roast potatoes and coffee.

“We believe that asparagine levels can be reduced substantially in wheat without compromising grain quality. This would benefit consumers by reducing their exposure to acrylamide from their diet, and food businesses by enabling them to comply with regulations on the presence of acrylamide in their products.

“That is a long-term goal, however, and this project aims to assess the performance of the wheat plants in the field and measure the concentration of asparagine in the grain produced under field conditions.”

During development in the lab, researchers ‘knocked out’ the asparagine synthetase gene, TaASN2.

Asparagine concentrations in the grain of the edited plants were substantially reduced compared with un-edited plants, with one line showing a more than 90 % reduction, according to project scientist Dr Sarah Raffan.

“This new trial will now measure the amount of asparagine in the grain of the same wheat when grown in the field, and assess other aspects of the wheat’s performance, such as yield and protein content.”

The plan is for a project of up to five years, ending in 2026, with plants being sown in September/October each year and harvested the following September. Funding is in place for the first year, and additional support is being sought for the subsequent years.

The edited plants will be grown alongside wheat in which asparagine synthesis has been affected using the ‘old-fashioned’ method of chemically-induced mutation.

This technique has been widely used in plant breeding since the mid-20th century but is not targetable in the way that CRISPR is and results in random mutations throughout the genome.

In contrast, CRISPR makes small changes to a target gene, in this case to knock that gene out so that a functional protein is no longer made from it. The process initially involves genetic modification to introduce genes required for the CRISPR process into the plant.

Once the edit has been made the GM part can be removed from the plants by conventional plant breeding methods over a few generations. The greater numbers of plants that can be grown in the field will speed up that process, says Professor Halford.

“The larger number of plants we can have in the field trial compared with a glasshouse will make it easier to identify plants that are no longer GM. This means that the first year of the trial will have plants that are both GE and GM but by the third year of the trial we expect them to be GE only.”

Despite the differences between genome editing with CRISPR and GM, genome edited plants are currently treated in the same way as GM under EU regulations, essentially blocking the use of a technology that is gaining official approval in many other parts of the world.

The hope is that the current UK Government consultation on this issue will lead to new legislation in the UK, allowing genome edited food products, carefully regulated, to be available to consumers.

News of this new trial will likely be welcomed by the food industry, where acrylamide is classed as a processing contaminant which requires close monitoring under EU law.

Professor Halford said: “Current regulations on acrylamide include ‘benchmark levels’ for its concentration in different food types and require food businesses to monitor their products for its presence. It looks likely that these regulations will be strengthened, with the EU moving towards the introduction of maximum levels above which it would be illegal to sell a food product. Other regulatory authorities are likely to follow suit.”

Source: https://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/news/genome-edited-wheat-field-trial-gets-go-ahead-uk-government

September 28^th 2021

A Low-Cost Instrument for Estimating the Starch Content of Cassava Roots Based on the Measurement of RF Return Loss.

Abstract.

The problem of simply and reliably estimating starch content of cassava roots in the field is addressed by the development of a low cost test instrument that measures return loss at radio frequencies using a coaxial probe. A clear relationship between starch content of cassava roots and the measured return loss of root samples at a specific frequency of 30 MHz is first verified experimentally. A prototype test instrument is then designed with goals of portability, low cost and simplicity of use. The test instrument displays starch content in 5 categories, from “low” to “high” using an array of 5 LEDs. The performance of the test instrument is experimentally verified in the field and a reliable correlation between cassava root starch content and LED indication is demonstrated.

Source: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/iccs/ and more specific https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10111197/1/Cassava%20Test%20Instrument%20-%20ISCAS%202020.pdf