Canola: No Longer Just About the Oil
CANADA - Although canola is one of Canada’s most important and widely grown crops, volatile market demand is a problem for producers.This volatility is the result of only having one high value product to market—canola oil— which only makes up 40% of the crushed seed. The remaining 60% is currently used to make a low-value feed meal.
MCN BioProducts has come up with a new technology that creates high quality products from the 60% of the canola seed that has, until now, not been very profitable.
The company has developed a fractionation process that produces a high-protein concentrate. MCN was able to do this with funding from Advancing Canadian Agriculture and Agri-Food Saskatchewan (ACAAFS) and industry councils from Manitoba and Alberta.
The concentrate’s nutritional value is comparable to fishmeal and can be used as a vegetable alternative to other products of animal origin such as meat and bone meal.
The canola protein concentrate could prove very useful to the aquaculture industry, one of the world’s fastest growing food production industries.
“The increased demand from the aquaculture industry places demands on fishmeal supplies,” says David Maenz, Chief Scientific Officer of MCN “which in turn results in unstable and high prices, creating a demand for quality vegetable alternatives to fishmeal.”
Source: Discover Moose Jaw
20 June 2006
1 minute read
