Agricultural sidestreams for culture media

Project aims

Agricultural sidestreams offer abundant, low-cost, and sustainable sources of valuable components for cell culture media. For instance, rapeseed protein meal (a byproduct of canola oil production) can provide both nutrients and functional proteins for producing cultivated meat. However, the sourcing, consistency, and purity of crop-derived components is unknown and could be impacted by variables such as where it is grown, time-from-harvest, storage, post-harvest processing, and handling. This is particularly true for a component such as rapeseed protein meal, which sees regional plant and processing differences (e.g., in Europe vs. the USA).

In order for agricultural sidestreams to support a robust cultivated meat industry at scale, producers will need to trust the consistency of these inputs and will need to understand and manage any potential variability. As such, this project aims to establish an understanding of how to assess, optimize, and maintain the consistency of cell culture media ingredients derived from rapeseed protein-meal. Specifically, this project will assess rapeseed meal-derived media components over the course of one year from different growing regions and following different canola oil extraction protocols. Media components will be tested for efficacy, composition, contamination, and impurities, and material handling and media component production will be tuned to maximize cell culture benefits and minimize variability.