Wageningen University & Research: WUR works with open collaboration platform Plant2Food on accelerating protein transition
WUR is part of a new international platform, Plant2Food, to accelerate the development of plant-based foods. WUR is working together with three Danish universities and the Food & Bio Cluster Denmark to address complex issues surrounding the developing plant-based protein sources – without applying for patents on the results. The Danish Novo Nordisk Foundation supports the platform over the next five years financially with EUR 27 million.
A greater proportion of our food production should turn to plant-based proteins if we want to be able to continue feeding the growing world population with the amount of arable land we have for that purpose. Research on the use of certain crops as meat substitutes can help accelerate the protein transition. By offering consumers a greater seection of tasty, nutritious and sustainable plant-based products that are also affordable.
Connecting research and industry
Cooperation in research and with industry is crucial here. That is why the Plant2Food partnership was established, consisting of Wageningen University & Research, University of Copenhagen, Technical University of Denmark, Aarhus University and Food & Bio Cluster Denmark. Many large and small Danish companies and organisations around food are united in this latter cluster.
Open collaboration on protein transition
The platform is founded on open collaboration, which means that the knowledge obtained in the platform is immediately available to everyone and companies and researchers can also use it. In this way, the protein transition can be accelerated and collaborations between different sectors in plant and food sciences are stimulated.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation, a major private funder of scientific research in Denmark, supports Plant2Food financially with around EUR 27 million over the next five years. The successful cooperation with this foundation stems from previous visit to Wageningen Campus organised by University Fund Wageningen, the Hub for Philanthropy.
About Plant2Food
Plant2Food is an Open Innovation in Science platform based on patent-free and open research in which universities and companies collaborate on complex challenges. All partners waive their claim to intellectual property rights on the knowledge used in the platform.
The collaborations focus on early-stage research on plant-based food development. This means that the research carried out is at the lower end of the scale for technology readiness level (TRL), which expresses how ‘mature’ a specific technology is.