Texturized legume-based food product by recombining fractions

Research Project, 2019 – 2021

Legumes such as Vici faba beans (referred to as faba beans) are protein-rich, gluten-free crops representing sustainable alternatives to animal-based protein sources. Usually soy is used for vegetable products, but has limited cultivation in Sweden. Development of novel foods based on non-soy legumes is hampered by lack of knowledge regarding the functional properties of the individual compounds in the bean.In the proposed project faba beans, today mainly cultivated for animal feed, will be used as the model for novel textured plant based food. Fractionation of the faba will yield neutral tasting ingredients, low in oligosaccharides, which will form the basis for texturized foods or act as a functional or nutritional components in food products. A new hybrid process, combining dry (more sustainable) and wet fractionation together with novel innovative pre-processing techniques such as pulsed electric field (PEF) will be evaluated. Functional properties such as foaming, protein fibril formation and fiber types will be characterized. We aim to utilize all streams generated during fractionation why they will be tested singly and in combination, at various conditions.The project group is highly multidisciplinary with actors with agricultural and processing expertise, experts in physico-chemical characterization of food components as well as whole food products. Researchers from academia, institute will work closely together with reference group containing industrial partners.