NEWS 16 Alternative Proteins Magazine April 2024 Benson Hill, Inc., self-described as an ag tech company unlocking the natural genetic diversity of plants, announced that recent advances in its soybean breeding programme will drive the doubling of its seed portfolio by 2025. The latest field evaluations on Benson Hill’s third generation of Ultra High Protein Low Oligosaccharides, non-GMO soybean varieties, showed protein gains of 2% over the previous generation and achieved a yield gap of only 3 to 5 bushels per acre, compared with commodity GMO soybeans. “We’ve successfully demonstrated that CropOS®, our AI-based prediction and data insights platform, can drive our predictive breeding efforts and give us a stepchange forward on multiple traits like protein and yield,” said Jason Bull, Chief Technology Officer of Benson Hill. “We are now seeing massive gains in the field that minimise the tradeoff between yield and protein, surpassing expectations from when we began building on the high-protein soybean genetics we acquired in 2019.” “What this means for the industry is that we’re accelerating our speed to market with de-risked, outcome-based products in record time,” Bull added. “We expect to expand our portfolio of seed innovations again in 2025 to offer two dozen varieties that encompass protein, lower-indigestible sugars, and quality oil.” Read more>> Benson Hill introduces five 2024 soybean varieties The German feeding technology specialist WEDA Dammann & Westerkamp supplied a liquid feeding system for the black soldier fly (BSF) to the Portuguese breeder EntoGreen. Founded in 2014 by Daniel Murta, EntoGreen produces high-quality animal protein and organic fertilizer from by-products of the agricultural and food industries at its headquarters in Santarém. In the system, the larvae of the BSF are fed with the by-products until they reach their final weight. The WEDA system, including control and process visualization, is a container system with mixing tanks that were specially developed and built for EntoGreen. “We worked closely with our partner WEDA on the design and construction,” emphasizes Daniel Murta, founder and CEO of EntoGreen. According to WEDA's statement, the feed substrate can be mixed in parallel in the liquid feeding system. The integrated Intrix dosing system ensures an individual combination and precise portioning of the feed substrate in the rearing units. In numerous test runs, even viscous substrates could be dosed and conveyed without any problems. At EntoGreen, the vegetable materials on which the larvae of the black soldier fly thrive consist of regional vegetable by-products that otherwise could not be used as nutritional sources and were lost. Read more>> EntoGreen to produce 25 tons of larvae per day with WEDA feeding system
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