Towards a holistic and sustainable Swedish value chain for pea biorefinery (100%Pea)

Research Project, 2021 – 2023

Purpose and goal: The current Swedish pea value chain is underutilized and the majority of the peas produced in Sweden are used for feed. 100%Pea aims to upgrade the Swedish pea value chain within the farming, storage and distribution as well as the processing steps for a highly efficient pea biorefining.
Within 100%Pea, researchers at Chalmers and SLU, in collaboration with Lantmännen, aim to find the best pea varieties, evaluate the cultivation location and the harvest time for the best pea raw material suitable for dehulling, milling and for a highly efficient biorefinery process. Expected results and effects: The project outcomes will contribute towards a holistic value chain for pea biorefinery platform to turn locally produced peas into high value multiple ingredients for food application.This will boost local innovation and thus will lead to increased economic revenue both for the farmers and the processing industry, as well as tasty and healthy plantbased food ingredients for the customers/consumers. Approach and implementation: 100%Pea will follow the implementation of its suggested solutions in 3 work packages (WP) spread across the pea value chain. First, the impact of pea variety, origin and harvest time on the biorefinery efficiency. Then, the most promising storage condition of pea and pre-processing condition fitting pea biorefinery will be investigated. Finally, a scalable pea biorefinery process resulting in high fractionation/extraction efficiency and high-quality fractions will be developed.