VASCO targets protein from food side-streams

Wageningen University & Research is leading a six-year programme to convert protein-rich agricultural side-streams into ingredients and finished foods, combining process engineering with product development, consumer research, and commercial supply-chain work.

The VASCO project — Valorising agricultural crop side streams into consumer foods — has secured almost €4 million from the Dutch Research Council. Its work will concentrate on residues and underused streams from legumes, rapeseed, and potatoes.

Many of those materials already pass through established agricultural and food-processing systems but end up in animal feed, energy production, or other relatively low-value outlets. Rapeseed cake, for example, remains after oil extraction and contains around 30% protein, yet is rarely processed for direct human consumption.

VASCO will examine how separation and fermentation can change that position. Protein extraction will include dry-fractionation approaches, while bacteria and fungi will be used to alter composition, flavour, nutritional properties, and the presence of compounds that can restrict food applications.

Fermentation may reduce substances including glucosinolates and phytic acid while changing aroma and taste. Selected microorganisms could also add nutritional value through compounds including vitamins B12 and K2, giving the biological stage a role beyond simple preservation.

The consortium is not working towards a single generic protein powder. Researchers plan to test ingredients and product concepts including spreads, snacks, meat alternatives, and fermented foods, while potato-derived side-streams will also be investigated as substrates for growing protein-rich fungi.

That product diversity reflects one of the persistent difficulties in side-stream valorisation. A residue does not become a food ingredient simply because laboratory analysis finds protein in it. Colour, flavour, texture, digestibility, functionality, antinutritional compounds, microbiological stability, seasonal availability, and processing cost all determine whether the material has a realistic manufacturing use.

Dry fractionation may offer advantages where processors can separate useful fractions without the water and energy demand associated with some wet-extraction systems, but yield and purity have to remain high enough for the intended application. Fermentation introduces a different set of requirements around culture selection, residence time, contamination control, downstream processing, and consistency.

VASCO is attempting to deal with those constraints as a connected system rather than treating ingredient recovery as the final result. Consumers will be involved during product development, allowing researchers and manufacturers to test whether technically viable ingredients produce foods that people are prepared to buy.

Commercial partners are also involved early in the programme. Wageningen says the consortium brings together universities, applied-science institutions, vocational education, nine companies, a growers’ cooperative, network organisations, and government and European-policy participants.

Industrial participants include businesses from ingredients and food production, giving the programme a route for testing how laboratory and pilot processes fit with existing formulations, factories, and supply arrangements. That becomes particularly important when the starting material is a side-stream whose quantity and specification are controlled by another production process.

A processor considering a new ingredient line needs confidence that sufficient feedstock will be available before committing capital. The company generating the residue, meanwhile, needs confidence that an ingredient producer or food manufacturer will take material consistently enough to justify segregating, storing, and preparing it.

That dependency can leave technically promising side-stream projects trapped between demonstration and commercial scale. Investment is difficult without a customer, while customers are reluctant to redesign products around an ingredient that does not yet have dependable industrial production.

Interest in fermentation-based protein technology has nevertheless been increasing. European alternative-protein investment has recently become heavily concentrated in fermentation, particularly where companies are attempting to turn microbial processes into repeatable commercial production rather than another series of small demonstrations.

VASCO has a different starting point because its raw materials are existing agricultural residues, but it faces the same scale-up discipline. Fermentation has to produce predictable material at an acceptable cost, while product developers need specifications that can survive routine procurement and factory quality control.

The project will also examine business models and supply relationships rather than assuming technology alone will establish a market. Economic and environmental performance must be measured alongside consumer response if an apparently circular ingredient is to compete with conventional protein sources on more than a sustainability claim.

Wageningen has already worked on protein recovery from agricultural residues through projects such as Breeding4Protein, which combined crop selection with process engineering and pilot-scale extraction. VASCO extends that work further towards foods, markets, and the commercial arrangements required to keep a new ingredient stream operating.

The six-year timetable acknowledges how many stages stand between identifying useful protein and selling a repeatable food ingredient. Separation yield, fermentation performance, product formulation, sensory acceptance, food safety, feedstock logistics, factory integration, investment, and customer demand all have to converge.

VASCO’s useful result will therefore not be measured by the number of laboratory prototypes it produces. The stronger test is whether a protein-rich residue that currently leaves a process as a low-value side-stream can return to food manufacturing with consistent specifications, an identified customer, and economics robust enough to keep the loop operating without permanent research support.