Exclusive: Shaping the Ingredients of the Future

Equinom, a leading-edge seed technology company from Israel, focuses on protein plant development, as one of the main food trends nowadays. The company also presents innovative, sesame seeds to ensure farm-to-fork traceability and sustainability. About these crops and what they mean for the food and especially for the bakery of the future, World Bakers asked Itay Dana, director of marketing with Equinom.

Talking about plant-derived foods and baked goods, Dana underlines that these products became mainstream only in recent years. An analysis of future market trends shows significant growth in this segment. “We also see an increase in the use of protein-derived flours as an innovative raw material for the baking industry. In the past, legumes flours were mainly used for gluten-free and niche markets, but we are now seeing the penetration of these grains into the mainstream – ingredients with high-quality protein driven by the need for dietary diversity and the race for innovation in end products,” the director of marketing says.

Equinom provides natural diversity for this category ensuring the seeds will have the yield and the distinctive traits that bakeries are looking for. The company is working on improving these legumes by various parameters including taste, texture, yield and overall functionality.

However, the sector is not without its challenges and Dana says these are related to the supply chain and know-how.

“Today the agri-supply chain of most of these crops is not organized. The market is mostly composed of small farmers/grain handlers. There are no seed companies with advanced breeding tools and there is a general lack of understanding about the potential of these varieties (functional and nutritional). Equinom offers a solution for all of this. Our Product Profiler application helps the industry to understand the potential within these crops. We developed a tool that will help them to start to ask questions and we will provide them the answers – if it is the best seed of choice or if there is a partner for the agri-supply chain that can provide them grains,” the marketing manager adds.

Equinom concentrates now on six types of protein crops (soybean, pea, chickpea, cowpea, mung bean and quinoa) and sesame. The company conducted an analysis of market needs (current volumes, growth potential,  texture trends and customers’ experience) with agriculture capabilities (the diverse genetic and functional aspects of the grains, the location of growth and the crops and breeding potential). They also asked different companies within the food industry and inquired into their preferences.

Equinom on different crops:

– Non-Gmo Soybean: “This is a mature market with strong and growing demand. But we found that there is a limited diversity, yield is low, and less work was done on improving its nutritional value”.

– Pea: “Second to the soybean, pea becomes a strong industrial legume for processing. Even today there are more then 10 different prominent and large companies involved with pea processing with more and more companies are joining the boot. But pea tends to have weak functionality and we believe we have the tools to improve its value. Even today we are in a stage that we were able to increase the protein content by 50% (reaching 30% protein in the seed)”.

– Chickpea: “A good source of protein with interesting and diverse functionality, but with limited industrial players. The world is growing a nice amount of chickpea, but a large portion of this legume goes to direct consumption. We believe chickpea has the potential to become a source of plant protein with advanced texture that could be great in different applications (bakery, pasta and analogues)”.

– Fava bean, cowpea and quinoa: “We see a lot of interest from the market when it comes to these crops, although from an industry point of view these crops represent only a small share of the plant protein market, but they hide a great performance in different applications. In many cases these crops are chosen as the best alternative to animal proteins from the perspective of their organoleptic and texture qualities”.

– Sesame: “It is generally less acknowledged for its high protein content. We aim to put more focus on sesame as a promising source of protein and not only source for oil. We developed sesame with shatter-resistance and improved in yield (more than 100% improved). The bakery industry is using sesame in many food applications, but we think that with its more then 30% protein it can also have room for become a plant protein”.

Plant Proteins in Bakery

By talking directly with the food industry, Equinom captured their requirements and they see that the plant protein becomes an important ingredient for their innovation process. “We believe we will see a nice growth in the near future, but we also see the challenges of working with different plant proteins. Legumes don’t have the functionality of gluten (the white legumes) so by using our product profiler and checking the different types of legumes we have, customer might find the attributes they are looking for,” Dana adds.

On the other hand, since Equinom launched their sesame program, they have witnessed dramatic growth in the market. Their production can be closer to the users and reduce the need of import and improve the tractability and uniformity of the grains.

The bakery industry is using sesame for various applications, on top of baking/pastry, but Equinom sees a growing interest in flours from sesame. Sesame has high protein and it could be a great innovative ingredient. By working with Equinom’s products, companies can receive the sesame at a lower price and with a better quality and can use it as flour, after taking out the oil. It is potentially very economical and can provide better functionality.

Improving the Seeds

Part of the process in today’s agricultural practices, breeding technology is not usually used to improve seeds for human consumption. The breeding programs are focusing on the feed and biodiesel requirements and on the agriculture benefits, such as yield performance and resistance to disease. Equinom’s breeding programs, on the one hand, provides the agriculture elements, but they also breed plants for multi-traits, improved nutrition, better functionality, seeds.

Equinom incorporates innovation in three levels of the breeding process to create multi-trait seeds in record time, gain a competitive advantage and create a barrier-to-market for competitors:

– Base for discovery – a wide and diverse proprietary germplasm which they created over the past five years and includes thousands of natural exotic plant varieties;

– Big-data analysis – which they use to discover genomic regions that correlate to desirable plant traits that we include in their seeds;

– Proprietary algorithms which they use to optimize multi-trait products and design them in-silico before breeding them in the field.

Equinom uses 40 different traits for agriculture properties (such as yield, seed color, seed size), but we are also improving protein traits (content, composition, solubility, amino acid score), fat / oil content, fatty acid composition, taste factors (they use e-nose and e-tongue for understanding the taste and breed for a better one), different carbohydrates (total sugars, ratio of different sugars, starch, fiber), water/oil absorption, anti-nutritional factors etc.

The company also breeds using the customer’s applications and method of analysis the grains. “Because we are working in multi-traits way – we design with the customer or by understanding market needs, seeds that have been improved in all these traits,” Dana comments.

Equinom has running breeding programs for different legumes, which in the end of these programs will bring have several types of each legumes targeted for specific food applications or market. “Customers can check in our Product Profiler to see if we are already working on his desired seed or he can check with us the changes we can incorporate in our program to develop his own variety. Some programs start 5 years ago (sesame) and continue on improving, some started 2-3 years ago (pea) and have two years to become commercial, and some will be ready within 3 years,” the representative from Equinom says.

There are many challenges for breeding, but the critical one is that it depends on nature to provide us its diversity. A trait that does not exist in nature cannot be created or improved. Also, nature has its own growing cycle, if a specific crop could create 20 seeds from one seed. It cannot be changed dramatically – so sometimes it takes time for moving the breeding programs. “It is not always easy to breed a crop. For example, lentil and quinoa are hard crops for breeding because of their small seeds and the structure of their organs,” Dana underlines.

The company says that there is always a customer for every seed they will create. “The diversity is huge but also the food industry is highly diverse and has different needs. But there are also cases that the customer does not know what he is looking for, and does not have the tools to analyze his own requirements and that can cause us to receive false directions,” the director of marketing explains.

Equinom highlights that its technology does not involve any GMO or gene editing tools. The process is clean, without manipulating the genes. On the other hand, they see the bigger demand from the industry to secure their ingredients and to increase the tractability and tracking of the product from farm to the fork. “Each and every seed that was developed by Equinom has its own genetic map – a combination of traits and their genes. We call it a genetic cassette. We provide to our customers with access to this cassette in a way that by using a simple PCR (polymerase chain reaction) they can be sure that the grains they purchased were “labled in the genes as Equinom’s,” Dana stresses.

The partnership with companies such as Roquette or Sabra is an approval and a confirmation for the Equinom that they are working in the right way. And it also provides them with a room for dialogue with the industry, with the customer. “These are big players, and the things they are doing with us is changing the industry,” the representative of the company says.

Equinom’s aim is to become the go-to source for the seeds in the food industry. “We want the market to challenge us, ask us for things that for them was a dream a year ago, we want the customers to understand that nature sometimes has all the answers they need, and we are here to help to reveal all the answers,” Dana underlines.