Wide Open Agriculture, a food and farming business based in Western Australia, has set its sights on new technology that will allow it to transform lupins into a high-protein ingredient for plant-based meats.
More than half the world’s lupins, a legume traditionally used as livestock feed, are grown in Western Australia. Wide Open Agriculture’s Ben Cole ponders that, despite the legume’s high protein content, “no one has really worked out how to unlock it.”
Cole hopes that new technology developed by Perth’s Curtain University will enable the lupin protein to be inserted “in a deeper matrix of carbohydrates and sugars” to “make a nice, tasty, soft mouth-feel” in a range of meat alternative applications.
READ MORE: Lupins unlocked for plant-based protein market using new technology [ABC]