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Could we get better nutrition from grass?
Author: Fintan Burke, scientific content Professor Uffe Jørgensen
Here, the agro-ecologist Professor Uffe Jørgensen from Aarhus University in Denmark describes his research journey to extract protein from grass for human nutrition. Although it's not anyone's first idea of a protein source, he explains that it has a lot of advantages; it's vegan, cheap, and sustainable. In fact, we could soon see a whole grass protein economy emerge.
Green leaves are all full of protein. They use it for photosynthesis, and you cannot have plant production without photosynthesis. One of these proteins, RuBisCO, is one of the most essential molecules for this process and is at the same time one of the best macronutrients for animals - and people.
Although common grasses are very productive and environmentally friendly, they have some downsides. Nitrogen is one of the most abundant molecules in proteins and can lead to high emissions from livestock. One of my colleagues from Aarhus’ Animal Science department said it best - "This is actually valuable protein. And we have this very big import of protein in terms of soy for Danish animal feeding, also at the European level. Why don't you try to extract that high amount of protein the grassland crops contain?” We started building on that idea more than ten years ago.
In the decade since we've seen society turn more to plant-based proteins for the sake of sustainability and animal welfare. When we started our Go-Grass project in 2019, we knew that we wanted to focus on food products.
There is still a long way to go, mostly from a food security and legislation perspective, but the potential is very promising. Our food-technologies colleagues started researching the idea of producing ingredients which have a very high price and high resource cost, such as egg white used in vegetarian and normal products.
But for vegan products, you cannot use egg white, so instead they use very expensive potato proteins. Our food scientists wanted to see if they could substitute it with the protein extracted from grassland. And RuBisCO is perfect in that sense. This shows that there is a good market opportunity to improve human nutrition with grass protein. And there are many other good reasons: sustainability, production issues, transport, CO2 emissions, eating less meat, diversifying to vegetables and improving the ecosystem. The potential related to using RuBisCO in human food is huge.
Probably, this is the most interesting development I've been involved in throughout my career. It is solving so many problems at the same time. It's a “win-win” because we can make some much-needed products for organic production systems and for the whole green economy, while also tackling challenges in farming. This topic is especially critical in Denmark.
If we want to adhere to climate and environmental policies and maintain a vibrant agricultural community, we need to find new solutions. For Denmark, it's really important to reduce nutrient losses because we have a big concern with fulfilling the EU Water Framework Directive. We have already passed two deadlines, and the final one is in 2027. If we don't reach that point, it will have severe consequences for the country, which will affect mostly the farmers.
We could avoid that by converting some of our annual crops into perennial grassland. And here is where the Go-Grass project takes importance, due to the possibility of converting grassland into an actual source of food, energy and other materials.
There is a lot of work to do, of course. From a food security perspective, you need to accomplish food regulations rules; describe nutrients and bioavailability; improve and manage the different grass and herbs that you can use, formulate the way you can extract the protein, and much more. Also, you have a lot of uses that you have to fit into the wider picture. From the extraction, you obtain both the protein and some other bioactive components and fibres. You can use them, of course, for packaging and for textiles. Those are very interesting areas that need some development too. So, in the biorefinery that produces the protein from grass, there are so many new products that can be produced, but this is still a long development.
In the future I can imagine in Denmark something like a hundred small green biorefineries and factories growing over the next 20 years. This is a revolution of our primary production. It would create jobs in rural areas, and it will help to revalue crop by-products and land management. We will be able to cover the most nitrate-sensitive areas in Denmark and also cover groundwater protection areas, because we can avoid any use of pesticides and excess of fertilizers. We can solve all of these environmental challenges by situating the bio-refineries strategically in the landscape. And this is one of the first very effective starts of a real bioeconomy in which we can develop many new products.
It could be the start of a small but important revolution of new green materials for a more sustainable world. From biopolymers to organic fertilizers without forgetting food for animals, cattle, and of course for people. All coming from grasses, green legumes and herbs.
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