Give peas a chance

There is an essential need for substitution of animal protein with plant protein in our diet to get a more sustainable food production, as up to 75% of the greenhouse gas emissions from our food consumption origins from meat and dairy food products. The goal of this project is to identify pea cultivars from NordGen that are more suitable for plant-based alternatives than the commercial available pea cultivars and need less processing.

One of the major drivers for this shift is plant-based alternatives, however, animal protein provides unique sensory and textural properties. The structure of plant proteins is very different from animal proteins and many of the plant-based alternatives currently on the market are rejected by consumers due to poor structural properties. Moreover, the plant proteins currently used in the plant-based alternatives are highly processed with the intensive use of energy and water. 

Legume storage proteins are often used for replacing animal proteins in plant-based alternatives, however, they usually show a weaker gelation capacity, which is an essential functionality in many food products. This challenge is compensated through energy-intensive steps such as fractionation and heating, and there is need for more sustainable alternatives. 

This project will use the potential genetic variations that exist in the more than 2,400 pea accessions in the Nordic genebank to select pea seeds having an optimal protein composition of albumins, globulins and individual proteins (e.g. legumins and vicilins) suitable for adding optimal gelling functionality to plant-based foods and use natural variation instead of intensive processing to achieve the desired functionality. Advanced proteomics together with X-ray scattering and bioinformatics tools will be applied to identify the protein compositions of different pea accessions and reveal the gelation mechanisms of pea proteins.

Project partners:

University of Copenhagen 

NordGen

SLU

University of Alberta