Grant: CCI Applied Research and Development Grants

This project is a key step in Protein Powered Farms path to supplying new functional protein and starch ingredients into the food ingredient market. Following this project, the company will be equipped to design plant-based food applications and specialty ingredient blends to achieve specific sensory, nutritional and quality traits for products. The input from experienced product formulators and this process will establish a system for the company’s future expansion of their research and development team with the ability to link lab derived functionality information with end-product quality and understand complex food ingredient interactions. The project deliverables will be completed by validating a commercial reference formulation for each product applications of interest to the client demonstrating a range of functionality of the ingredients used. These commercial reference formulations will be extracted from literature review and industry reference standards and validated by the PRK team. Once a baseline reference formulation is confirmed, the PRK team will include PPF ingredients in formulations based on the known functionality of the ingredient and the projected benefit of the inclusion of the pulse ingredient. A range of inclusion levels of the pulse ingredient will be applied to the formulation and end-product quality will be assessed using objective and subjective testing methods and analyzed using statistical analysis software. The data on end-product quality information will be used to correlate to the ingredient functionality, creating a model that will help guide recommended applications for future ingredients developed by PPF. Furthermore, the PRK team will provide feedback to PPF on potential to modify and improve ingredient functionalities for specific food applications. PPF will then undergo ingredient modification or ingredient blending to improve the performance of the ingredient within the application and validate modified ingredient functionality. The modified ingredients will then be tested for their performance in the commercial reference formulation. Final optimization of end-products using the most functional ingredient for end-product application will be conducted to verify the ingredient development process. Culinary arts and culinary skills students will be engaged throughout the project and have the opportunity to showcase the use of the functional ingredients in student led recipe development (SLRD) activities.