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4,000,000 USD has been awarded to 21 of the world’s leading scientists from nine different countries to research into plant-based and cultivated meat.
Awarded by The Good Food Institute’s (GFI) Competitive Grant Program from visionary donors, the funding has been allocated to ‘top biochemists, tissue engineers, computational modeling experts, plant geneticists, and food scientists’.
The 2020 grantees aim to ‘address the crucial technical bottlenecks facing the plant-based and cultivated meat industries, with research specifically focused on taste, texture, cost, and scale-up improvements’.
‘Global demand’
In a statement sent to Plant Based News, GFI’s Associate Director of Science and Technology Erin Rees Clayton said: “If we want to see plant-based and cultivated meat become an integral part of the global food supply, we must fill critical white spaces in research.
“As we work to find sustainable approaches to meeting the global demand for meat, this funding will enable us to bridge key gaps in alternative protein research, addressing unanswered questions and unmet technological needs.”
‘Transform the food system’
Bruce Friedrich, Executive Director at GFI, added: “Plant-based meat and cultivated meat have the potential to transform the global food system, but this requires the industries to overcome significant technical hurdles that remain on the path to price parity, scaleup, and commercialization.
“Building a robust foundation of open-access data will enable the entire sector to advance more efficiently and bring plant-based and cultivated meat to the masses.”
