In May, Burcon NutraScience Corporation announced it would build a $65 million pea and canola protein processing plant in Manitoba.

This is the first commercial-scale canola protein facility in the world, the company said in a news release. It didn’t give details on the location of the plant.

“We already have strong customer interest but have been unable, until now, to provide sufficient quantities of our canola proteins to these companies,” said Johann Tergesen, president and chief executive officer of Burcon NutraScience in a statement.

“The Burcon research and development team is confident there’s a lot of pent-up interest and demand resulting from our years of working with food manufacturers sampling our proteins in their product formulations,” said Tergesen.

Why it matters: Plant-based proteins appear to be the wave of the future. With canola-growers facing uncertain markets, harnessing canola protein may give them more options.

The plant is expected to begin operating mid-2020, about the same time that the world’s largest pea protein processing facility, owned by Roquette, will open near Portage la Prairie.

The Roquette plant will have the capacity to process more peas per year than Manitoba currently produces.
Canola protein “has potential to be a significant market for farmers,” said Delaney Ross Burtnack, executive director of the Manitoba Canola Growers Association.

Ross Burtnack said that, in her opinion, canola protein has the potential to become as valuable, or more valuable than canola oil.

Canola meal has been used as high-protein animal food, especially in the dairy industry, said Ross Burtnack.

The Manitoba Canola Growers have been working with researchers to develop canola protein food products. Research began in 2010 when experiments with cold-pressed canola oil led to discussions on what to do with the byproduct, or “press cake.”

Lee Anne Murphy, who managed the project, said soy meal has been used “for millennia” in Asia to produce foods like tofu. They looked to use some of that long-standing body of knowledge in their research.

Tofu is made by soaking soy meal to’ make “milk” and then coagulating the product into curds and pressing it into a cake.
Murphy found that canola “milk” could be made and then formed into a tofu-like food with a naturally golden colour and mild flavour.

Ross Burtnack said when she tried canola “milk,” she found it virtually flavourless and with a silky texture. This would make it easy to add to food without needing to mask the taste, she said.

Murphy’s team also breaded and deep-fried the tofu-like food into a crispy snack similar to a mozzarella stick.

“If you’re already eating a plant-based burger, why not a plant-based snack?” said Murphy.

The researchers also used the canola protein product to make ice cream, chocolate spread, and a softer curd with a texture similar to brie cheese.

Ross Burtnack said the Manitoba Canola Growers Association is looking for a partner to commercialize these canola protein products.

Burcon NutraScience produces Supertein, a highly-soluble canola protein isolate, and Puratein, a protein isolate composed of globulin proteins that can be used as an emulsifier and binder in food products.

“We expect you will see products incorporating Burcon pea and canola proteins to start appearing on store shelves shortly after our processing facility has been commissioned,” said Tergesen.

“I think the industry is the part we’ve been missing,” said Murphy, adding that Burcon’s manufacturing facility would allow consumers their first taste of canola protein.

“It’s pretty exciting,” she said.

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Illinois-based ADM has signed on to a 20-year licensing deal with Burcon for worldwide production, distribution and sale of Burcon’s Clarisoy, billed as a 100 per cent soluble, transparent protein ingredient for protein-fortified drinks.

“ADM’s demonstrated excellence in the production and sale of food ingredients makes the company the ideal partner to commercialize Clarisoy soy protein,” Burcon president Johann Tergesen said in a release March 4.

“The versatility of Clarisoy complements our cur-rent product portfolio and increases application opportunities for our customers,” Bruce Bennett, general manager for ADM’s Protein Specialties wing, said in the same release.

The formalized agreement follows up on a binding letter of intent signed in November last year to work toward this deal, which licenses Burcon’s Clarisoy-related know-how and trade secrets to ADM.

Burcon, based in Vancouver with lab and technical facilities in Winnipeg, described the deal as a “watershed development,” as commercializing Clarisoy will give Burcon its first earnings stream.

The deal calls for ADM to make royalty payments to Burcon based on net revenues from sales of Clarisoy, while Burcon will remain responsible for maintenance of the Clarisoy soy protein patent portfolio during the 20-year term.

Among its other attributes, the Clarisoy protein isolate is low in viscosity in acidic beverages, allowing for its use in products such as juices, soft drinks and sport drinks in a pH range as low as 2.5, as well as in powdered beverage products.

Clarisoy is also heat stable in acidic beverages, Burcon said, which would allow a food processor to hot-fill with no loss of clarity or change in viscosity.

Clarisoy proteins also don’t have a “beany” taste that’s sometimes associated with soy protein, the company has said. Its “superior flavour profile” would thus allow the protein’s use in other foods outside the beverage market and open up “significant opportunities” in the existing global soy protein market, Burcon said.

Burcon has previously said it’s “unaware of any other commercially available soy protein that can make all these claims.”

ON TO CANOLA

The two companies also agreed to extend the development period in their agreement on Supertein and Puratein, two canola protein isolates in the Burcon pipeline.

The extension gives the companies until March 1, 2012 to work on research aimed at “expanding the commercial value” of the canola protein products.

Burcon, during that time, will work on refining its canola extraction and purification technologies and develop new technologies and specialized canola protein products, the company said.

The extension would also allow Burcon to bring in a third-party research organization to conduct joint research, including human clinical feeding trials, on Supertein’s potential as a functional food ingredient.

“In particular, the research would seek to develop evidence of Supertein’s ability – given its high cysteine content – to mitigate certain physiological effects associated with metabolic syndrome.”

Metabolic syndrome is the term covering a group of factors occurring together for increased risk of coronary artery disease, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes. Cysteine is believed to inhibit insulin resistance, a major risk factor in that group.

Unlike canola protein, soy protein products have long had global regulatory approval for use in foods and nutritional products, which led the two companies to focus first on the Clarisoy deal.

With the ADM agreement in hand, “now we are able to devote more resources toward our canola protein technologies,” Tergesen said.

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Wheat values generally dropped $1 to $4 per tonne in the November CWB Pool Return Outlook (PRO). The exception is No. 1 CWRS 14.5, No. 1 CWSWS and feed wheat, which have all increased slightly from October. Durum is up between $1 and $6 per tonne. Malting barley is down $7. The board said volatile and uncertain world markets will continue to influence grain commodities. “Wheat will continue to be supported by corn and soybean price structures, but negatively affected by the volatile macroeconomic conditions.” – Staff

Short crop:

The tally for the nearly complete Russian harvest stands at 64.2 million tonnes of grain, down 38 per cent from last year. That figure, close to earlier Agriculture Ministry estimates, is for so-called “bunker weight” and will shrink by five to seven per cent after the grain is cleaned and dried. Farmers had also harvested 5.1 million tonnes of sunseeds, and 20.8 million tonnes of sugar beets, and have 15.3 million hectares of winter wheat. That was in line with targeted acreage but well down from the 18 million acres sown last year.

Resilience:

Canada’s canola crop took advantage of warm, dry weather in October to produce a bigger crop. The industry’s estimate of production is 11 per cent over Statistics Canada’s October estimate of 10.4 million tonnes. October’s favourable weather, which followed wet, cool growing conditions through much of the summer, boosted production, said Denise Maurice, vice-president of crop production for the council.

“We’re seeing a lot of recovery,” Maurice said. “Resilience, it’s just amazing.”

Uncomfortable:

The possibility of food riots in the Third World is increasing.

“The situation is getting a little bit uncomfortable,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, senior grains economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. “Poor countries have to import food at much higher prices. Whether or not this will lead to domestic problems, turmoils, demonstrations, riots, the kind of things we saw in 2008, or not, it is not possible to predict. ” It depends very much on how these countries will cope with these high prices.” Ritz names food safety board:Ottawa lawyer and ex- Canadian Food Inspection Agency chief Ronald Doering will chair Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s new advisory board on food safety and other CFIArelated issues. Board members also include former University of Manitoba agriculture dean Harold Bjarnason, oilseed breeder Keith Downey, plant breeder Rob McLaughlin, ex-Nova Scotia agriculture minister Brooke Taylor, dairyman Marcel Groleau and CFIA chief food safety officer Dr. Brian Evans. Such a board, at “minimum,” was urged in the Weatherill report on the 2008 listeria outbreak in deli meats. CN conductors ratify labour deal:Canadian National Railway’s (CN) conductors, yardmen and traffic co-ordinators have voted in favour of a deal that keeps them off the picket line until at least July 2013. The agreement, tentatively reached in early October pending the outcome of a ratification vote, followed a round of what the conductors’ union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), described then as “last-chance meetings” with a federal mediator. Contract talks by that time had stalled to the point where a walkout or lockout could have been launched with 72 hours’ notice. ADM eyes soy protein product:Vancouver plant protein processor Burcon NutraScience has signed on to draft a licence agreement for agri-food firm Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to market its soy protein products. The company said it has a non-binding letter of intent laying out its and ADM’s plans for a licence agreement, under which Burcon would license its Clarisoy technology exclusively to ADM to produce, sell and market soy protein isolates. Clarisoy is billed as 100 per cent soluble, transparent and low in viscosity in acidic beverages.

Ex-CountryGuideeditor Don Baron dies at 82

Funeral services were held Nov. 20 in Regina for farm writer Don Baron, a vocal critic of regulation in the Prairie grain industry and an early proponent of corn and soybean production in Ontario. Baron, who died Nov. 13 of unspecified causes, first joinedCountry Guidein 1952 and was its editor from 1962 to 1975. He later worked for the Palliser Wheat Growers group and for then-Saskatchewan premier Grant Devine and authored four books includingCanada’s Great Grain Robbery(1997) andJailhouse Justice (2001).

The post In Brief… – for Dec. 2, 2010 appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Aston Chipanshi, the manager for Climate Monitoring and Forecasting with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada said that the southern part of the Prairies has a good chance of avoiding an early frost because of those damp conditions.

“There’s too much moisture in this area,” Chipanshi said. “Moisture itself generates heat when it’s evaporating, and that should prevent temperatures from dropping below zero.”

While the southern part of the Prairies may be spared from early frost, the outlook isn’t as good for northern Alberta and the lower interior of B. C. “The Peace Region and lower mainland of B. C. have about a 60 to 70 per cent chance of an early frost,” Chipanshi said.

Canola Proteins Pass GRAS Step

U. S. food regulators officially have “no objection” to two made-in- Canada canola protein products being designated GRAS (generally recognized as safe).

Burcon NutraScience, a Vancouver firm with facilities in Winnipeg, said Aug. 30 the U. S. Food and Drug Administration’s letter to that effect means its Puratein and Supertein products can be considered “GRAS notified,” for use alone or as ingredients – an important designation for makers of foods such as salad dressings, meal replacements, juices, beverages and nutritional bars.

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