The plant-based meat industry is experiencing unprecedented growth in market share. To support this growth, and to ensure a continued supply of optimised source material, the industry plans to invest heavily into R&D. The Good Food Institute is a non-profit that advocates for plant-based meat and grants funding to scientists in this emerging research area. GFI needed to create a key resource that would help plant scientists and food scientists speak each other's language and set up collaborative research programs.
I came in as the plant biology expert in a team that included cell biologists, a food technologist, and an ingredient engineer. I carried out a literature review of 150+ papers in plant breeding. I wrote a 10,000-word white paper, in which I highlighted the latest accomplishments in the fields of crop diversity, genomics, genetic engineering, digital phenotyping, speed breeding, and precision agriculture.
The future of sustainable food rests on immediate and extensive collaboration between plant scientists and food scientists. The document that I worked on will act as a resource for the two communities to begin speaking each other’s language.
