United Soybean Board (USB) has awarded a $1.1 million grant to Purdue University Food Entrepreneurship and Manufacturing Institute (FEMI), in partnership with the Universities of Arkansas and Missouri.

The award is for a joint project that aims to build infrastructure and connectivity for small and medium-scale processing of soy-based value-added products.

The project was co-founded by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, a federal organisation that supports research activities focused on addressing key agriculture problems, including plant health and production, agricultural economics and rural communities, and food security.

Dharmendra Mishra, associate professor and director of FEMI, will lead the project that was born out of a national discussion on the soybean value chain.

The project began on 1 October with a planned one-year time frame. It will focus on phenotyping for compositional traits in novel value-added applications, conduct trials to eliminate pressure on small to medium-scale industry sectors and carry out final product quality and sensory evaluations.

“Soybeans currently produce the highest protein yields per unit area compared to all other plant-based sources. The major challenge is that quality issues with flavour and functionality have impacted the utilisation of currently available soybean protein products for food,” said Mishra.

He continued: “There was a critical need to help the soybean farmers and soy processors. Our project proposes to solve the bottleneck of small- and medium-scale processing and facilitate the scale-up of identity preserved systems through our multistate team.”

Purdue team member, Senay Simsek, added: “Soy-based products have continued to grow over the past years and are expecting continued growth into the future. With this grant, Purdue Food Science will be a hub for research, development and education that will make connections and bridge the gaps between growers, breeders, researchers, students, the food industry and consumers.”