Opportunity for

• Investors, strategic partners, including from the sucrose industry, protein extraction factories and barley plant breeders interested in natural sweetner commercialisation
• Food ingredient companies interested in sourcing natural sweetner produced via a barley plant
• R&D and industry bodies interested in supporting R&D and regulatory approval processes for value-added agriculture industry development.

Opportunity description

Industry challenge

The zero-calorie sweetener thaumatin (E957) was originally discovered in the fruits of katamfe (Thaumatococcus daniellii), a plant species from albizzia Thaumatococcus within the arrowroot family (Marantaceae). The natural reservoir of katamfe is the rain forest zone of tropical Africa. It includes the line of countries from West Africa Guinea to the region of Congo.

Until now, thaumatin has been successfully transferred in the case of several plant species, such as potato, apple or tomato (see references BarMatinTM website).

These alternative expression systems have no chance on the market due to their complicated cultivation, harvest as well as storage, and low expression rates. BarMatinTM has been developed taking into consideration this scientific history, and in particular has been optimized for high expression rates in a specific tissue in the barley kernel. BarMatinTM is actually the best and cheapest methodology to produce the sweetener in large quantities.

Current opportunity

BarMatinTM Is seeking partners to commercially produce, process and market thaumatin through spring barley production. This includes:

• identifying plant breeders interested in developing and commercialising spring barley varieties to have thaumatin extracted and used as a natural sweetner replacement for sugar
• food ingredient companies interested in sourcing natural sweetner produced via a barley plant
• R&D and industry bodies interested in support R&D and regulatory approval processes for high-value industry development.

Collaborators will participate on the different levels of the added value chain of BarMatinTM This could be in form of license agreements.

Opportunity background

Background of the innovation BarMatinTM is summarized in details under the webpage www.barmatin-sweet.de

Potential other applications

Future opportunities are in the field of calorie-reduced sucrose mixtures for the international sweetening market (in particular acia-pacific region).