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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Moolec

Good Food Institute Sees Fourth Pillar For Alt Protein Market in the Form of Molecular Farming

Over the past few years, the Good Food Institute (GFI) has created dedicated reports for each category, or “pillar,” in the alternative protein market: plant-based, precision fermentation, and cultivated meat/seafood. This week, however, GFI teased what it sees as a possible fourth pillar for alternative protein pillar in the form of molecular farming.

Molecular farming, which GFI refers to as “plant molecular farming,” is a concept that readers of The Spoon may be familiar with. It involves producing animal protein using seed crops. Genetic engineers introduce animal DNA directly into the seeds, transforming the resulting crops into protein factories. Once the genetically engineered seeds are planted, traditional farming management techniques can be employed to grow the crops until they are ready for harvest.

The technique has been picking up momentum in recent years, in part because of the cost savings it promises to introduce. After all, there really is no more efficient way to produce calories for human consumption than by sprouting them from the ground, and by transforming plants into small bioreactors, molecular farming companies can take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness of leveraging traditional row crops as protein production engines.

The addition of a fourth pillar to the alternative protein market comes as molecular farming is gaining traction. Earlier this month, molecular farming pioneer Moolec announced that their safflower plants had been cleared by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the USDA, posing no greater plant pest risk than non-genetically engineered safflower plants. Through its former parent company, Bioceres, Moolec has the capability to produce proteins such as chymosin (an enzyme used in cheese) using safflower plants. The USDA approval comes just months after Moolec became the first molecular farming company to go public in early 2023 through a SPAC vehicle offering.

Bioengineered ingredients specialist Motif Foodworks announced earlier this year that they were diversifying into molecular farming through a partnership with IngredientWerks. IngredientWerks will help Motif produce its Hemami ingredient, an ingredient identical to myoglobin in beef, through corn crops. Previously, Motif had been using precision fermentation techniques to produce Hemami.

According to GFI, there are currently 12 companies worldwide using this technology to grow various products, including casein and lactoferrin (Forte Protein and Greenovation Protein), animal-free dairy proteins for cheese, ice cream, and yogurt (Miruku, Mozza, and Nobell Foods), growth factors for cultivated meat (Tiamet Sciences and Bright Biotech), and more.

Interestingly, GFI notes that there are currently no alternative protein startups in the Asia-Pacific region using molecular farming, with only one startup (Miruku) in the broader APAC region (New Zealand). Given the focus on alternative proteins in many Asian countries, this situation is likely to change soon (one can almost hear the frantic typing of PowerPoint pitch decks while reading this post).

You can find the GFI state of the industry reports – including the molecular farming fact sheet – on this page free for download after registration.

CES Session: The Future of Farming (Video & Transcript)

The first session we will feature is titled ‘The Future of Farming’, a panel which featured experts on gene-edited crops, molecular farming, and vertical farming.

The session description:

The numerous challenges facing today’s farmers require them to be ever-more-efficient to survive. In this session, we’ll look at how farmers are employing automation, IoT, biotech and more to create the farms of the future.

The panelists for this session included:

  • Vonnie Estes, VP of Innovation, International Fresh Produce Association (Moderator)

  • Haven Baker, Co-Founder, Chief Business Officer at Pairwise

  • Amit Dhingra, CSO | Professor and Department Head, Moolec Science | Texas A&M University

  • Katie Seawell, Chief Commercial Officer, Bowery Farming

This content is available to Spoon Plus subscribers. If you would like to subscribe to Spoon Plus, you can do so here.

Spoon Weekly: JOKR Shuts Down, Moolec Going Public, Mars & Perfect Day

Another fast-grocery startup bites the dust.

JOKR, the speedy grocery delivery company that was part of a larger wave of startups that entered the US last year, is shutting down its US operations, according to an email sent to customers today. The company said the last day of delivery in New York City and Boston will be June 19th.

From the email:

While we were able to build an amazing customer base (thank you!!) and lay the groundwork for a sustainable business in the US, the company has made the tough decision to exit the market during this period of global economic uncertainty.

To read the full story, click here.

Who Are The Leaders of the Food Tech Revolution?

We may be a little biased here at The Spoon, but we think food tech is the most exciting industry going.

Think about it: Food is what many of us – heck, most of us – spend a huge chunk of our day thinking about, craving, searching for, and consuming. Food is something everyone is passionate about.

It’s also an industry where some of the biggest advances in AI, biology, agriculture, design, chemistry, and many more fields are now manifesting themselves to create some of the most interesting and exciting changes we’ve ever seen in what, where, how, and why we feed ourselves.

And perhaps most importantly, food systems and their future will undeniably play an outsized role in determining what life on earth looks like here in 10, 20, or 100 years.

All of which is why we love covering this industry, and the biggest joy in all of it is talking to the people leading the food tech revolution. The innovation, the collective progress we make, the futuristic advances we see nearly every week, all of it is a direct result of the many inspiring voices pioneering in this space and trying to create a better world.

To read the full post, head to The Spoon.

Molecular Farming Pioneer Moolec is Going Public Via SPAC

Moolec Science, a company that develops animal-identical proteins utilizing a technique called molecular farming, announced today it is going public via a special purpose acquisition company (“SPAC”). The company is doing so via a business combination agreement with LightJump Acquisition Corp, a company formed in 2020 as a SPAC vehicle. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2022.

Moolec, a spinout of Bioceres Crop Solutions, is one of the first companies to utilize molecular farming to create alternative proteins. The attraction of molecular farming is that it uses crops as a protein factory, compared to traditional microbial fermentation techniques that utilize more capital-intensive fermentation infrastructure.

With molecular farming, crops are genetically modified to produce a target molecule. The Moolec team matches the target molecule with a host plant, creating different plant-molecule combinations for different applications. The company has launched two products so far, including a plant-based dairy ingredient called chymosin and nutritional oil GLA, both of which use safflower as a carrier crop. According to Moolec, both products have been cleared by regulatory authorities and the company is currently ramping up seed inventories. 

You can read the full post at The Spoon. 

Kitchen Tech

Fellow, Maker of Specialty Coffee Gear, Raises $30 Million Series B

Fellow, a maker of specialty coffee gear, announced this week they had raised $30 million via a Series B funding round led by Nextworld Evergreen.

The San Francisco-based company, which has made a name for itself with its somewhat pricey design-forward coffee-making gear, was started by founder and CEO Jake Miller in his dorm room at Stanford where he began work on a coffee steeper that raised close to $200 thousand on Kickstarter.

Since those early days, Miller and his team have launched a family of coffee and tea gear, ranging from French presses to kettles to insulated coffee mugs. The company, which has gained a following among baristas and celebrities for its sleekly designed Stagg EKG kettles (and also influenced a dozen or more knockoffs), also sells coffee beans via its website and has opened a flagship retail store in San Francisco.

You can read the full interview with Jake Miller of Fellow at The Spoon. 

The Shrooly Lets Aspiring Mushroom Farmers Grow Fungi On Their Kitchen Countertop

While I’m not a mushroom eater – they’re slimy and weird-looking pieces of mold – I’m all for growing them at home because, well, mushrooms are slimy weird-looking pieces of mold.

And, from the looks of it, I (and the mycophiles among us) may soon have another option to become a small-scale mushroom farmer with a home mushroom fruiting chamber called the Shrooly. The new gadget is currently being offered up through a new Indiegogo campaign and is scheduled to start shipping to backers in December of this year.

The appliance, which is available starting at $299 on Indiegogo, is a countertop home growing chamber with light and humidity control. The appliance has on-device control knob and a small display screen that gives updates on the mushroom’s growth, temperature data, and how long until the mushroom is ready for harvest. The Shrooly will also have an app that allows the user to control humidity and monitor the growth of the mushroom.

To read the full story, head over to The Spoon.

Here Are Four Tech-Powered Lunchboxes That Might Help You Fight Lunchflation

Everything is getting more expensive lately, and food is near the top of the list.

For those of you who work outside of the home (and don’t have free and tasty food as a work perk), you’re probably trying to figure out how to fight the suddenly very real problem of lunchflation. The easiest and most obvious way is to pack your own lunch, but often times food tossed in a brown bag or a plain old lunchbox (Evil Knievel or otherwise) doesn’t stay warm or cold enough or whatever needs to be done to optimize freshness.

Luckily for you, we live in an era of feature-packed lunchboxes. Models with everything from temperature zones to hydro flasks to stackable compartments and more give everyone from school kids to lunch-toting nine-to-fivers an abundance of options for bringing a meal along for the day.

And things are about to get even better. A new generation of tech-powered lunchboxes is on its way to help make eating homemade lunches outside the home an even better experience. In this post, I take a look at four of these new options coming to market for those looking to pack up their lunch for work or school.

To read about the four tech-powered lunchboxes, head over to The Spoon.

Future Food

SuperMeat Believes An Open Source Approach to Cultivated Meat Will Benefit All

Lab-grown or cultured meat is a sexy topic that fulfills the dream of healthy eating while saving the planet’s precious resources. Most of the headlines focus on the companies in the four corners of the world waiting for regulators to wave the checkered flag. The more interesting story—at least for those who enjoy looking under the hood—is in the processes, supply chain, and partnerships vital to this promising industry.

To understand the drill-down of what it takes to go from harvesting animal cells to creating consumer-facing products, it’s valuable to speak with visionaries such as Ido Savir, CEO of Israel’s SuperMeat. In addition to his knowledge of cultivated meat, Savir’s background in IT provides him with a panoramic view of the infrastructure needed to build a successful B2B company.

While it might not qualify as an awe-inspiring announcement, SuperMeat recently received a grant from the Israeli Innovation Authority to establish an open-source high-throughput screening system for optimizing cultivated meat feed ingredients. As an analogy, think of it as a system that ensures cows or chickens receive only the best quality feed to produce larger quantities of high-grade meat or chicken. But there is a significant difference.

Read the full post at The Spoon.

Mars Teams Up With Perfect Day to Launch Animal-Free Chocolate Bar

Today Mars announced the launch of a new animal-free chocolate under the brand CO2COA. Developed in partnership with precision fermentation specialist Perfect Day, the chocolate is available today via the product’s new website.

While Mars already offers a range of vegan chocolate bars, this is the first bar from a major candy brand that replaces animal dairy with identical proteins produced through precision fermentation. A German startup by the name of QOA announced last year they are using precision fermentation to develop new chocolate, but their focus is on replacing cocoa rather than animal inputs. The Mars deal follows an announcement made by Perfect Day and Betterland Foods in March of an animal-free chocolate bar.

Read the story at The Spoon.

Food Robots

Picnic’s Pizza-Making Robot Heading To Five College Campuses This Fall

Seattle-based Picnic Works announced today that its Pizza Station robot will be heading to college this fall as part of an expanded pilot program with college food service company Chartwells Higher Education. The pilot will include five colleges: Texas A&M, the University of Chicago, Missouri State University, Carroll University, and Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis.

The rollout of the pizza robot follows a successful eight-week pilot of Picnic’s Pizza Station at Texas A&M. According to Picnic, during the initial pilot, the robot at Texas A&M made over 4,500 pizzas and enabled the kitchen staff to reallocate 8 hours of kitchen worker time per day to other tasks.

The origin story of Picnic’s enrollment at Texas A&M goes back to COVID when Chartwell’s district executive chef Marc Cruz couldn’t find enough workers to staff the pizza makeline and often found himself in the kitchen making pizza by himself. After someone at food service supplier Rich’s suggested that Cruz and his team check out Picnic, it wasn’t too long before the startup installed its robot in College Station, Texas.

To read the full story, click here!

Molecular Farming Pioneer Moolec is Going Public Via SPAC

Moolec Science, a company that develops animal-identical proteins utilizing a technique called molecular farming, announced today it is going public via a special purpose acquisition company (“SPAC”). The company is doing so via a business combination agreement with LightJump Acquisition Corp, a company formed in 2020 as a SPAC vehicle. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2022.

Moolec, a spinout of Bioceres Crop Solutions, is one of the first companies to utilize molecular farming to create alternative proteins. The attraction of molecular farming is that it uses crops as a protein factory, compared to traditional microbial fermentation techniques that utilize more capital-intensive fermentation infrastructure.

With molecular farming, crops are genetically modified to produce a target molecule. The Moolec team matches the target molecule with a host plant, creating different plant-molecule combinations for different applications. The company has launched two products so far, including a plant-based dairy ingredient called chymosin and nutritional oil GLA, both of which use safflower as a carrier crop. According to Moolec, both products have been cleared by regulatory authorities and the company is currently ramping up seed inventories. 

The newly combined organization, which will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “MLEC,” will have an initial proforma equity value of $504 million. Once public, the newly combined company will represent the first publicly traded alternative protein startup focused primarily on molecular farming. The company plans to use the funds from the transaction to commercialize its initial products, fund additional R&D around new products, and expand hiring.

In 2022, Molecular Farming Startups Will Move Toward Commercialization of Animal-Free Proteins

Like many of the technologies that are driving innovation in the alternative protein space, plant molecular farming has traditionally been used in the pharmaceutical industry. The practice — which involves genetically editing a crop so that its cells produce a desired protein — is being discussed as a way to rapidly produce proteins for COVID-19 vaccines.

In the food industry, molecular farming is one route to producing the animal proteins that give egg, dairy, and meat products their visual, taste, and functional properties. Molecular farming allows you to use the exact same protein that would normally be produced by a chicken or cow, without the need for any actual animals.

Moolec Science, a spinoff of Argentina-based agtech company Bioceres Crop Solutions, is probably the most prominent name in molecular farming for the food industry. Moolec already sells chymosin, a cheesemaking enzyme, which the company grows in safflower plants. They’ve also successfully grown meat proteins in soybean and pea plants.

The Moolec team believes that molecular farming can help to bring down the end costs of alternative meat products. (“There’s nothing better than low-tech farming to produce at an enhanced scale and low cost,” company CEO and co-founder Gastón Paladini told The Spoon back in October.) And they may be right.

Molecular farming can help producers to avoid some of the costly and tricky problems of growing proteins in traditional bioreactors. When you use a plant as your bioreactor, as food scientist and thought leader Tony Hunter pointed out in an article this year, you don’t need to worry about maintaining sterile conditions: Plants have built-in immune systems.

Moolec plans to launch its first animal-free meat protein in late 2022 or early 2023. The company is currently working toward regulatory approval for its products — and its progress will be an interesting test of regulatory tolerance of Moolec’s brand of genetic engineering.

One potential concern for regulators as they scrutinize molecular farming processes will be the possibility of gene flow from modified crops to related plants. Tiamat Sciences, a Belgium-based molecular farming startup, is limiting that possibility by growing its crops in a contained vertical farming system.

Tiamat has plans to expand alongside the cell-based meat industry. “By targeting nascent markets on the verge of scale-up, we’ve already demonstrated significant traction for our solutions and an early revenue potential that is outstanding for a biotech startup,” said Tiamat’s founder and CEO France-Emmanuelle Adil in a recent press release. The company currently produces GRAS-certified, animal-free growth factors for cultivated meat, and also manufactures proteins for the pharmaceutical industry.

Last month, Tiamat announced that it had raised a $3 million seed funding round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm True Ventures. The company is using those funds to construct a pilot facility in Durham, N.C. — so we may see them boost their capacity in the year to come.

Molecular farming startups still have some issues to work out. As Tony Hunter noted in his piece on molecular farming, plant tissue has larger and fewer protein-producing cells compared to the same volume of mammal tissue, making plants less productive as protein factories. And there are costs associated with extracting protein molecules from plants at the cellular level.

Still, the same upsides of molecular farming that make it attractive to the pharmaceutical industry will likely continue to spark interest from alternative protein producers — especially as those producers seek ways to bring down the retail prices of their products.

How New Culture and Moolec Science Are Growing Cow-Free Dairy Proteins

Most of today’s vegan cheese startups face the challenge of reproducing cheese using ingredients like plant-based oils and nut milks. That’s no easy feat, as unique dairy proteins are responsible for some of the taste, stretch, and melt properties of cheese.

But alternative cheese may soon be getting a tech upgrade. A handful of startups have developed cow-free processes for replicating those key dairy proteins. Last week, The Spoon got on Zoom with the CEOs of two of those companies—New Culture and Moolec Science—to ask about the state of alternative cheese technology.

New Culture & precision fermentation

When California-based startup New Culture set out to develop a better alternative cheese, the company’s founders surveyed a range of processes that could be used to grow dairy proteins. Company CEO and co-founder Matt Gibson says that precision fermentation stood out because the technology had already been used by the conventional dairy industry at commercial scale.

“It’s a process that has been done time and time again,” says Gibson. Precision fermentation is used today to produce chymosin, a cheesemaking enzyme. “And that means that all those risk factors that come with anything that you scale up have really been eliminated. It’s a tried-and-true method of going from a small fermentation shake flask of say 50 milliliters to a large fermentation tank of 200,000 liters.”

In New Culture’s fermentation process, microbes are genetically edited to convert sugar into a dairy protein called casein, which makes up about 80% of the protein content in cow’s milk. To grow the protein at high volumes, the microbes need to be kept at a certain temperature and pH, and fed sugars at a specific rate.

According to Gibson, another advantage of using precision fermentation is that the regulatory process is relatively simple. This is partly because the dairy industry has set a precedent for using precision fermentation, and partly because New Culture is using the process to create an existing protein rather than a new ingredient.

“So there’s no concern from a regulatory point of view about the fact that you’re using genetic engineering,” he says. “You go through the regulatory process to show that the process you’re using—like what you’re feeding your microbe—is safe and stable. So the regulatory process is expected to be very smooth sailing.”

New Culture expects to complete the regulatory approval process next year. The company’s flagship cheese will be mozzarella, which they plan to launch as a branded product in restaurants in late 2022. In particular, Gibson says the team has its eyes on the pizza industry, which is a huge consumer of mozzarella, but has been held back from using alternative cheeses because today’s plant-based options don’t stretch well or tolerate the high temperatures in pizza ovens.

Casein is the foundation for all kinds of cheeses. Someday, the company could add other bacterial cultures and age their casein curd base to create blue cheese, brie, and other varieties. For now, they’re focused on building scale and getting their mozzarella onto menus.

“To quickly transition away from animal-derived cheeses, you need a technology that can scale quickly and get costs down quickly,” says Gibson. “And that’s what precision fermentation ultimately allows you to do.”

Moolec Science & molecular farming

Moolec Science, headquartered in the U.K., is taking a different approach: The company grows animal proteins using molecular farming. Last year, The Spoon reported on Moolec’s success in producing the cheesemaking enzyme chymosin (mentioned above) in plants.

Molecular farming solves the problem of scaling up in a different way from precision fermentation. Through molecular farming, says company CEO and co-founder Gastón Paladini, Moolec can take advantage of existing agricultural infrastructure for production purposes. “There’s nothing better than low-tech farming to produce at an enhanced scale and low cost.”

In molecular farming, crops are genetically modified to produce a target molecule. The Moolec team matches the target molecule with a host plant, creating different plant-molecule combinations for different applications. The company’s proof-of-concept chymosin is grown in safflower plants; its next products, meat proteins, will be grown in soy and yellow pea plants.

Moolec is a spinoff of Bioceres Crop Solutions, an agtech company. The team at Bioceres spent over a decade building the tech platform that Moolec now uses for molecular farming, says Paladini—“from the laboratories and construction design to the new genes, new seeds, field trials, farming, and harvesting.”

While precision fermentation companies can scale up using models created by the conventional dairy industry, Paladini says that the scale for molecular farming already exists. “There aren’t many precision fermentation tanks out there to produce alternative protein right now, so the industry needs to build new fermenters,” he says. “With molecular farming, we could use the same lands that are currently used to grow animal feed right now. You only need to switch the seeds.”

Bioceres has an existing network of growers in Latin America and the U.S., which is helping Moolec to expand its operations.

The regulatory process for molecular farming is relatively complicated, requiring both USDA and FDA approval (while the precision fermentation process requires only FDA approval). Moolec is currently working its way through the regulatory process.

Moolec’s process involves farming genetically modified crops on a large scale, a controversial practice in some regions. Paladini says that the team plans to take an active and transparent approach when it comes to communicating with the public about GMOs.

“We believe that we need to inform, educate, and promote the benefits of GM techniques, when they’re used for a good reason,” he says. Toward that end, the company is working on building an NGO in collaboration with scientists and industry representatives. The organization, GM4GOOD, will “promote the benefits of using science and GM techniques.”

Moolec is currently working with R&D departments at CPG companies to develop end products using its proteins. The team plans to re-launch its plant-derived chymosin later this year, and to introduce its alternative meat proteins in late 2022 or early 2023.

Both New Culture and Moolec can leverage knowledge from previous applications of their technologies, and both companies will face challenges as they build up scale and work toward regulatory approval. And there are questions to ask about both companies’ processes: about the energy intensivity of protein extraction, for instance, and the land use implications of growing animal proteins in plants at scale.

But both companies’ uses of technology to produce native dairy proteins mark big steps forward for alternative cheese. The next wave of cow-free cheeses will likely be more versatile and convincing, and more attractive to restaurants and CPG companies.

Food Tech News: Subway Station Greens and Moolec’s Joint Venture

Moolec and Grupo Insud launched a joint venture

Moolec, a food tech company that develops animals proteins through plants, and Grupo Insud, an ingredient manufacturer for the pharmaceutical industry, shared this week that they will partner together for research. The two companies will focus on developing solutions for the alternative protein industry, using fungi, yeast, and microorganisms to create animal-free ingredients. Their goal is to develop products with upgraded nutritional value, improved organoleptic properties, while still maintaining affordability for the ingredients.

A protein bar that might help with hangovers

We were recently sent an email regarding a new protein bar that is supposed to do more than keep you full and taste good. A company called SoBar produces protein bars that they claim help you reduce alcohol absorption when consumed prior to drinking. The company produces three flavors – Carmel Macchiato, White Chocolate Almond, and Honey Peanut, all of which are gluten-free and 130-calories.

Reducing the negative effects of alcohol is always a plus, but SoBar seems to be banking off the common knowledge that eating basically any food helps slow down the absorption of alcohol into your bloodstream. However, SoBar’s parent company, Zeno Functional Foods, holds a patent for something called Alco-HOLD. One of the main ingredients of Alco-HOLD is protein, and this is the component of SoBars that is intended to reduce the effects of alcohol.

Coca-Cola and Lime partner to encourage recycling

This week Coca-Cola and Lime, an electric bike and scooter company, announced that they have partnered to encourage their customers to recycle plastic bottles. Cola-Cola transitioned its 13.2 oz bottles to 100% recycled plastic material (rPET) earlier this year, and aims to promote this through the partnership. Anyone who purchases the rPET sip-size bottles can sign up on CokePlayToWin.com/endlesslyrefreshing and pledge that they will indeed toss spent bottles in the right bin. Those who sign the pledge will receive a promo code via email for a free, 10-minute scooter or bike ride through Lime.

Subway station vegetables in Seoul

Hydroponic greenhouses can be placed in unlikely places, like in the middle of a bustling city or in an abandoned building. This week, Gastro Obscura posted about another improbable place to find fresh vegetables: Sangdo Station on Line 7 of the Seoul Metro. Appropriately called Metro Farm, it is owned and maintained by Farm8, a South Korean agricultural company. Metro Farm supplies fresh greens and sprouts to Farm8’s next-door organic cafe for salads.

Moolec Science Plans to Make Animal Proteins With Soy, Pea & Safflower Using ‘Molecular Farming’

Moolec Science wants to bring sustainable animal protein production to the farm. Not through the cattle pasture or henhouse, but through crops.

Using a genetic engineering technique known as molecular farming, the company believes it can leverage the scale of production of crop farming to create animal proteins more cost effectively than other forms of cellular agriculture – like cultured meat – can do today.

The technique, which uses genetically-modified crops like tobacco or safflower to produce proteins, has been used since the 90s in the pharmaceutical industry. However, using molecular farming for production of animal cell protein through crops for use in food is relatively new and something Moolec’s predecessor company has spent years working on.

Moolec is a spinout of Argentina-based bioscience conglomerate Bioceres SA, which has already developed a technology for producing an enzyme used in the production of cheese called chymosin. While chymosin originally was produced through traditional animal agriculture (it’s found in the intestines of cattle and goats), in recent decades cheese producers have sought more sustainable approaches such as fermentation-based production of chymosin. The technology developed by Bioceres – and now Moolec – is a hybrid approach that enables them to produce the same animal-cell chymosin through plants like safflower.

The process to create chymosin originally developed by Bioceres was patented in 2015, and the company already sells the enzyme to cheese processors in markets across Europe. By spinning off Moolec, the creators of the technology hope to now extend its use to create recombinant animal proteins through new crops like soy and pea.

“Molecular farming is not yet a fully explored technology in the alternative protein space,” said Moolec CEO Gastón Paladini in a Zoom interview with The Spoon. “We do all the science up front from the lab to use genetic engineering to express animal cells.”

I asked Paladini why the company decided to create a new company separate from Bioceres, a well-resourced corporation publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. He told me the founders, including the CTO Martin Salinas who led the research into the chymosin through safflower, felt a new company would bring focus and help them build out their technology.

“We started thinking about how we could use all the experience and R&D from all these years to explore new products for this new alternative protein space,” said Paladini.

There’s no doubt that the team also sees opportunity in a white hot alt-protein space where venture capitalists are looking for any new spin on alternatives for traditional industrial farmed animal protein, in part because there is huge demand for plant-based proteins for use in making alternative meat products.

The company sees two crops in particular that they are excited to extend their process for animal-cell protein through plants: soy and pea.

“Soy and pea isolates and concentrates are the stars in a plant-based landscape,” said Paladini. “They are the main raw material to make plant-based products. We are actually doing the same process but with animal cells inside.”

However, unlike the company’s safflower-based products, which they can derive revenue from immediately, the development of the newer product lines will take some time. According to Paladini, they expect that the new proteins expressed through molecular farming to be on the market by 2025, slowed in part by the long approval process required for genetically modified food products.

2025 is a ways off, but Paladini said the company will be able to start to monetize alt-based animal proteins sooner. They have already started working on another process to bring the same animal proteins to market sooner through precision fermentation.

Spoon readers may know that precision fermentation is the technology that the Good Food Institute (GFI) sees as the bridge between the current plant-based alt-protein market and the world of lab-grown meat, where technology is more nascent. Unlike lab-grown meat that uses in vitro animal cell cultures, companies like Perfect Day and Geltor engineer microbes to produce protein that is essentially identical to that produced by animals.

The technology is already producing proteins at scale and the GFI expects the cost of precision fermented proteins will be lower than that of animal-produced proteins.

For Moolec, its fermentation technology also is just a quicker route to market, and embracing both approaches gives them an intermediate term (precision fermentation) and long term (molecular farming) monetization strategy, something no doubt important to investors.

And having a diversified revenue strategy makes sense for a company looking to raise capital. While Biosceres pre-seed investment gave them enough to start the company, Paladin told me they plan on exploring capital markets immediately to secure a seed round in 2021.

“Hopefully we could go to our seed round very soon so as to expand our lines and also to explore new proteins,” said Paladin. “The idea is to probe what we’re doing, and at the same time to go to the capital markets and some strategic partners to start building this new adventure.”

Paladin believes part of the company’s appeal to investors is due to the fact that’s while it technology is new and cutting edge, it could help secure a future for the oldest producer in the food ecosystem – the farmer – going forward.

“The technology is quite straightforward in the end because we aim to bring farmers back to the equation,” said Paladin. “Because we put all our science up front, but at the end the biology, the sun and the land do the rest. We are using all the efficiency of the plants of a very low tech, a non tech-technology.

“This is farming.”