Tate & Lyle has partnered with botanical biotech specialist BioHarvest Sciences to develop “next-generation” sustainable and economic sweeteners synthesized from patentable molecules. This is done using BioHarvest’s Botanical Synthesis platform, which grows plant cells that “mirror and magnify” phytonutrients in specific plants. 

The non-GMO process ultimately delivers “all the benefits of the plant” without having to grow the plant, the partners highlight.

Product innovation will center on ingredients that offer a “sugar-like” flavor profile without the after-taste and negatives typically associated with sugar.

“The ingredient solutions will be more affordable to the food and beverage industry while using a fraction of the land and water required in traditional extraction and land-based growing practices,” share the companies.

“This partnership is very exciting for Tate & Lyle. BioHarvest provides the first and only fully validated industrial scale plant cell technology platform for the production of plant metabolites,” says Victoria Spadaro-Grant, chief science and innovation officer at Tate & Lyle.

“Initial exploration will focus on our sweetener platform, but our partnership also provides for expansion into other areas.”

Joining food innovation capacities

Tate & Lyle brings its diverse portfolio of sugar reduction solutions and years of ingredient research to the partnership, along with its applications, nutrition and regulatory expertise and global commercial network. The partnership forms part of Tate & Lyle’s ongoing open innovation program.

“This partnership forms a major milestone in the history of BioHarvest Sciences,” says Dr. Yochi Hagay, CTO and co-founder of BioHarvest Sciences.

“It follows more than 15 years of intensive R&D and manufacturing scaling of our Botanical Synthesis technology process to the point that global innovators like Tate & Lyle can now leverage our capabilities to develop new plant-derived molecules to better meet consumer demand for healthier food and beverages.”

Last month, Tate & Lyle launched The Natural Sweetener Alliance with bioalternatives scale-up platform Manus. The partners aim to expand access to natural sugar reduction solutions, starting with stevia-based Reb M. They hail this as the “first large-scale commercialization” of Reb M, which is sourced, manufactured and bioconverted in the US.

In other novel, biotech-fueled sweetener advances, Ginkgo Bioworks and GreenLab are scaling the production of brazzein — a sweet-tasting protein found in the fruit of the native West African Oubli plant. The novel sweetener has a sweetness factor up to 2,000 times greater than sucrose and is made with proprietary technology that grows proteins inside corn kernels using Ginkgo’s cell programming capabilities.