Pasture to Plate (P2P): realising the enormous potential of UK grasslands

从牧场到餐桌（P2P）：实现英国草原的巨大潜力

• 批准号: BB/W018012/1
• 负责人: Richard Green
• 金额: $ 255.67万
• 依托单位: Harper Adams University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FW018012%2F1
• 关键词: Pasture; Plate; P2P; realising; enormous

Our vision is to maximise the food potential of UK pasture by using targeted chemical processing and novel biotechnology to convert grass into nutritious edible fractions for healthier and more affordable alternative foods, making UK agriculture more resilient and sustainable. Our proposal aims to use novel chemical processing methods to extract the central edible fractions from grass (protein, digestible carbohydrates, vitamins, lipids, fibre) before culturing the yeast Metschnikowia pulcherrima on the cellulosic fraction to produce mycoprotein and a lipid suitable as a palm oil substitute. These ingredients will then be combined in a range of alternative meat and dairy products, displacing environmentally damaging imported ingredients currently used. Further processing of the waste products from the process will produce nutrient rich fertilizers and help create a model for future circular farming economies. When optimised this process would only need 10 to 15kg of fresh grass (20% dry matter content) to produce 1kg of edible food ingredients, of which approximately 25% would be lipid and 35% protein. Whilst not entirely comparable on a nutritional basis this represents a ten-fold increase in productivity compared to cattle raised for meat, or twice the productivity of dairy cows. By converting grass into edible food components, a number of advantages are realised including:- UK produced substitutes for palm oil, soya protein, and other imported food ingredients. This has environmental benefits in the UK and abroad. It will provide UK produced healthy nutritional substitutes for ingredients grown on former rainforest sites, whilst significantly reducing food miles;- Produce UK food substitutes for over two billion pounds worth of annual food imports, with the opportunity to export significant quantities of surplus produce;- Improved UK resilience to climate change as grass is more resilient to flooding and other extreme weather conditions than most other crops;- As the process is feedstock agnostic, it should work equally well with wildflower rich pasture grass. This potentially enables the reintroduction of grasslands with greater biodiversity without having an impact on the grasses usability, an environmentally beneficial by-product of the process;- Providing a commercially viable non-livestock based market for forage production that would also allow arable land that is prone to flooding to profitably return to meadow grass production;- The profitable inclusion of grass in arable rotations to help combat blackgrass and other pesticide resistant weeds;- At present, in some areas it is uneconomic to build and maintain livestock fencing, resulting in grassland in these regions having little commercial agricultural value. These grasslands will now become commercially viable, and contribute to UK food production;- Limited risk in scaling up as there is no need to invest in new farm machinery, existing forage equipment and storage facilities will suffice and the bio-processing technology is mature and already used for many other industrial applications;- Opportunities for investment in a new UK food industry;- With the production of more digestible fractions, this project would produce more sustainable, UK sourced, feed for monogastric livestock;- Initial research suggests that sufficient unutilised grass is available for the P2P process, therefore, this system should have little or no impact on grass supplies for dairy and livestock farming.

我们的愿景是通过使用有针对性的化学加工和新颖的生物技术，将草转化为营养丰富的可食用部分，以提供更健康、更实惠的替代食品，从而最大限度地发挥英国牧场的粮食潜力，使英国农业更具弹性和可持续性。我们的建议旨在使用新颖的化学加工方法从草中提取主要可食用部分（蛋白质、可消化碳水化合物、维生素、脂质、纤维），然后在纤维素部分上培养酵母 Metschnikowia pulcherrima 以生产真菌蛋白和适合用作棕榈油的脂质代替。然后，这些成分将被组合到一系列替代肉类和乳制品中，取代目前使用的对环境有害的进口成分。对该过程中的废物进行进一步处理将生产出营养丰富的肥料，并有助于为未来的循环农业经济创建一个模型。优化后，该过程仅需要 10 至 15 公斤鲜草（干物质含量为 20%）即可生产 1 公斤可食用食品成分，其中约 25% 为脂质，35% 为蛋白质。虽然在营养基础上不完全可比，但与肉用牛相比，这意味着生产力提高了十倍，或者是奶牛生产力的两倍。通过将草转化为可食用食品成分，可以实现许多优势，包括： - 英国生产的棕榈油、大豆蛋白和其他进口食品成分的替代品。这对英国和国外都有环境效益。它将为前雨林地区种植的原料提供英国生产的健康营养替代品，同时显着减少食物里程；- 为每年价值超过 20 亿英镑的进口食品生产英国食品替代品，并有机会出口大量剩余农产品；-提高了英国对气候变化的适应能力，因为草比大多数其他作物更能抵御洪水和其他极端天气条件；- 由于该过程与原料无关，因此它对野花丰富的牧草应该同样有效。这有可能使草原重新引入具有更大的生物多样性，而不影响草的可用性，这是该过程的环境有益的副产品； - 为饲料生产提供商业上可行的非畜牧业市场，这也将允许耕地容易发生洪水的地区，以有利地恢复草地草生产；- 将牧草纳入耕地轮作中，以帮助防治黑草和其他抗农药杂草；- 目前，在某些地区，饲养和饲养牲畜是不经济的围栏，导致这些地区的草地几乎没有商业农业价值。这些草原现在将变得商业可行，并为英国粮食生产做出贡献； - 扩大规模的风险有限，因为无需投资新的农业机械，现有的饲料设备和储存设施就足够了，而且生物加工技术已经成熟，已用于许多其他工业应用；- 英国新食品工业的投资机会；- 随着更易消化的部分的生产，该项目将为单胃牲畜生产更可持续的、来自英国的饲料；- 初步研究表明，有足够的未利用饲料草是因此，该系统对奶牛和畜牧业的草料供应影响很小或没有影响。