Marcia Walker On Food Innovation, Designing Better Ingredients at the Source | EP 86

So, you know, to set the stage, I kind of wanted to talk about when people think about food innovation, they often kind of think about what happens in the lab or kind of the processing plant or the formulation kitchen.

And I know in the article, in the food technology article, you were talking more about how innovation is moving upstream to the crop itself.

And I was hoping you could just kind of dive into that a little bit.

What do you mean by that and why is it happening now or what's enabling it to happen now?

Sure.

So you're right.

Um, there's a lot of, a lot of technologies that are being applied, um, to, to crops, to ingredients upstream.

I mean, we're, we're manufacturing every single day.

We're innovating in the kitchens.

Absolutely.

Um, but you're also correct that there's attention that's being placed on, on upstream crops.

Um, why is that? It's because there's this recognition, um, that some of our processes are, um, right before disruption.

So we're being asked to create less processed grains and oil seeds.

We're being asked to do things differently.

We're seeing changes in things like packaging that are changing the way we approach approach how we construct our our final products so we begin to look at you know what's a little bit further upstream how can we start to look at these crops differently are there functional oils are there functional proteins are there functional starches that are valuable to to customers that we can enhance so what i mean by that is to we, we understand in crop genetics that there are certain genes that, um, will dial up or dial down certain oil fragments, um, well, well characterized.

And we know that some of those oil fragments are really valuable to, to downstream processes.

I use highly canola as the example, really well characterized.

Um, we know how to, to, to dial up, um, like, um, oil in a canola plant.

And that really has helped change a crop like canola from being a really good oil to being a really great oil in certain applications like frying or high temperature application.

So that's a really easy example as to what is possible, what can be done.

And that same set of philosophy is being applied now to other crops.

on how do we start to influence the crop or nudge it in a direction that becomes more friendly to the downstream processes that we're trying to deploy.

Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.

And you kind of mentioned this, you're having those conversations already with your customers who are looking for, you know, they're needing to produce less processed goods to the consumer who's requesting that and demanding that.

And I'm sure that also involves like asking for improved nutrition and flavor and like you said, all sorts of other aspects in terms of shelf life and um what what other kinds of conversations are you having today with those food and ingredient companies that you weren't having five to ten years ago or were you even having those conversations five to ten years ago