![]() It also makes a good egg substitute in food products. This makes Rubisco a very useful protein for processing into meat substitutes and plant-based dairy alternatives, for example as a way of providing a firm ‘bite’ or improved mouthfeel. In its pure form, Rubisco has a neutral aroma, colour and flavour, and a good balance of the essential amino acids. The protein is therefore found in every leaf of every green plant on Earth, often in considerable quantities. Rubisco, or Ribulose-1,5-biphosphate carboxylase oxygenase, is a crucial enzyme in photosynthesis. The leaves are either ploughed back into the soil as fertiliser or are composted, both of which are low-value uses of the residues compared to extracting protein for human consumption. These residues are composed of leaves and stems. Harvesting food crops results in the yearly production of around 40 tonnes (for sugar beet) to 50 tonnes (for tomatoes) of crop residues per hectare. These might include producers of dairy and meat substitutes,” says Bruins. “That could mean working with greenhouse horticulture businesses, or businesses that use plant-based proteins as inputs. The researchers hope to work with the private sector to further develop the technology to apply it on an industrial scale. “Our study proves that you can achieve substantial gains in sustainability by making better use of what you already have. “Our method filters out the components that are smaller than the protein we want to extract, and this includes many toxins,” says project leader Marieke Bruins, a senior scientist in protein technology at Wageningen University & Research. ![]() The leaves of potato and cassava plants, for example, also contain toxins, and like tomato leaves they therefore are unsuitable for direct consumption. The same method could also be suitable for extracting Rubisco from the leaves of other food crops. The result was a high-value protein powder which was free of toxins. The researchers investigated whether they could use this method to also remove the toxin hydroxytomatine from tomato leaves. The tomatoes in the mixed-height lighting scheme "produced an average of 14% more fruit," GE Current reported, while also noting that the two different groups exhibited no difference in quality or taste, as they both registered similar acidity and Brix (sugar) levels.The pilot study was based on a method of extracting Rubisco from sugar beet leaves. In the other, it used 66% toplights while mounting the remaining 34% of the LED fixtures among mature leaves. ![]() It also kept other growing conditions such as water, nutrition, ambient temperature, and CO 2 levels the same.īut in one group it used only toplights. Researchers grew each over the same five month period, applying the same light intensity, duration, and red-heavy spectral content to both. Wageningen University & Research (WUR) compared the growth of about 20 trusses of two tomato varieties with another 20 trusses of the same two cultivars Marinice and Santiana. A study by a Dutch university has shown that placing about a third of a greenhouse's LED grow lights among high wire tomato crops rather than suspending all of them above the vines can increase the yield, according to lighting company GE Current, which supplied the fixtures. ![]()
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