Nichole Astra:
Welcome to Talking Plant Protein. I'm Nicole Askshay Arora actually. Aurora with Ingredion is joining me now, their Technical Director. Welcome to the program.

Akshay Arora:
Thank you, Nicole.

Nichole Astra:
So listen, Ingredion is a huge company. How I would boil it down, I would say, you're making sure our food is made of food, and doing things as naturally as possible. With employees of over 11,000, everyone knows Ingredion. From your expertise, how have things changed in the last five years, by way of ingredients, now that consumers want that transparency?

Akshay Arora:
A very good question, Nicole. And what I would say that, we know that consumers are shifting to more plant-based diets, and to make that happen, that's a big challenge industry has taken over now. So the changes are coming fundamentally across the value chain. If you think about how seeds are grown, how the seeds are transformed into a protein source, and that protein is then transformed into end product like a burger, for example; so changes have happened across the value chain.

Akshay Arora:
I give you specific examples; from the plant science piece itself, now we are seeing more and better understanding of the plant genomics. There was a watershed moment in 2019; we worked with yellow peas as our primary pulse ingredient; and the genomics, the entire of genome of pea protein was made available in 2019. Why that is important? Because ultimately, in order to drive sustainability, you need to grow crops that are disease resistant, drought resistant, can maybe provide you more of what you need and less of what you don't need. So that public information is going to democratize that innovation on the seeds side. Right?

Akshay Arora:
The second piece of that is how those seeds are transformed into a valuable protein product. So, most of the technologies that are being used today are leaning more environmental friendly. And example of that is concentrates, which are maybe 55% to 60% protein; that is simply a physical transformation of seed using very little energy, no water, and zero waste. So we have plants in Canada that procure locally produced pulses, and convert them into flours and concentrates, with zero waste and very sustainable process.

Akshay Arora:
Another way as technologies have developed over a period of time, our wet milling process; if we want to go to a higher protein purity level, let's say 80% or above, then we have water-based processes that just use water, no solvent, just water, to create that level of pure protein ingredients. So that's the second phase of the value chain.

Akshay Arora:
Then the third phase of the value chain is, you created that protein, but can we make great tasting food products with it? So that's another area that's that actually a lot of innovation has happened in the last five years. There's several that ingredient has been very actively involved in developing as well. And now, I have seen, industry has certainly taken an approach of top-down approach, where let's take the best ingredients we have, with the best equipment we have, and let's create the best possible great tasting food we have.

Akshay Arora:
But now, in the last five years, I also see a bottoms-up approach, where we are thinking, "What does customer want? And to make it happen, in terms of taste, in terms of texture, what do we need to deliver at the application level, at the ingredient level, at the process level, and at this seed level?" So, this is still in infancy, and the tools that are coming up are amazing. And one of those tools which you might have heard of is AI machine learning and data science, computational science.

Akshay Arora:
So these technologies are allowing us now to connect the dots. I would not want to claim that we are there yet; but we see an early promise in those technologies to help us get there. Right? So I would say ingredient, we are providing one part of the puzzle, which is the protein piece. But there's more happening in the industry as well, because plant-based proteins bring a lot to the able.

Akshay Arora:
But we know, for example, in terms of their taste, there's a lot more that can be done. So from our end, we have developed a very unique technology that can minimize the off flavors in plant proteins. And we launched last year, an amazing range of products called ultra performance proteins. They have much cleaner in taste profile, have very little or low microbials, so you can practically use them as ready to eat. But that's one solution.

Akshay Arora:
Other solutions that are coming up are from the flavor industry, for instance. We see better flavoring agents, masking agents that can minimize some of the planty notes that are with those proteins. So why that's important? Because I firmly believe we can have a range of wonderful technologies; but at the end of the day, the food has to taste great. So that's where this matters the most; that's what's going to keep bringing consumers back and back over and over again.

Nichole Astra:
So let's stay with transparency and clean label desire from the customer for just a minute, and what has been Ingredion's response to that?

Akshay Arora:
At Ingredion, we have done a lot in terms of traceability of where the seeds come from, and we developed specific corn varieties. We call them TrueTrace varietals. And the idea behind them was purely from sustainability point of view; we can tell each and every seed varietal, where does it come from? That is an approach we are hoping to take on the proteins side as well with our pulses. And hopefully, you'll hear more about that in the near future.

Nichole Astra:
Does Ingredion have an AI division, or who are you partnering with?

Akshay Arora:
We started a new group internally last year; it's called Ingredient Informatics Group. And we have started with some data scientists here, but we are also partnering externally; which I cannot share all the details here, but the group, I would say, is in infancy, but we are putting in place some proof of principle ideas. And hopefully, that will tell us even more how far this technology can take us.

Nichole Astra:
An Ingredion, like we've said, is absolutely everywhere across the globe, in our everyday products, in so many different sectors. Could you even say how many plant-based partners or products you contribute to?

Akshay Arora:
That's a very good question. I may not have an exact number for you, but we have over 20 different products in the plant protein space that we have launched in the last five years. So, another big thing I would say was in this journey, we started with partners; and as of last year, we have made huge impacts in this space. So we commissioned three different plants within Ingredion network to enable us to bring more to the table. And we launched our first pea protein isolate out of our Nebraska plant last year, as well as our own concentrates and ultra performance concentrates out of Canada last year. So we'll continue to do more, but we are very excited about those investments we have made.

Nichole Astra:
And certainly here, we talk about the protein content of plants; but really plant-based is across the board: beverages, supplements for health, cosmetics, plastics, which is so exciting. But something I saw in one of your sectors was paper. What can you tell me that Ingredion does for paper?

Akshay Arora:
So, Ingredion has been very active in the area of using nature-based materials and converting them into value-added products. Historically, Ingredion is known for its competency in the area of starch, and we has starch-based solutions that are either from corn and other substrates, that could be used for paper and corrugated material. So right now we don't have anything specific from the plant protein side that goes into paper and corrugated, but we have other starch-based materials other than pea and faba and chick pea that we currently use for industrial purpose. And we have been doing that for quite some time now.

Nichole Astra:
And again, it just goes back to the one of those core values for you guys, to optimal sustainability through as much nature as possible, not only in the ingredients, but in the manufacturing. So we thank you for the work that you're doing. You're absolutely pioneer in this space. I'm so pleased to speak with you. And I want our audience to know that this conversation will continue at Future Food-Tech, San Francisco in March. What will you be speaking on there?

Akshay Arora:
I will be speaking on the topic of open innovation and M&A, and how we can stay relevant using those two avenues.

Nichole Astra:
Fantastic. We look forward to it. Thanks for your time on Talking Plant Protein.

Akshay Arora:
Thank you very much, Nicole. It was a pleasure speaking to you.