The protein challenge:Matching future demand and supply in Indonesia

Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world and in the coming years food production will need to catch up with its growth. To fulfill the protein demand of this growing population, the productivity of the Indonesian agricultural sector should be increased. This can be achieved either by expanding the agricultural land or by increasing the productivity of existing agricultural land and protein use efficiency. An expansion of agricultural land is not always possible or desirable: large parts of Indonesia comprise forest areas, including tropical rain forests. Consequently, the optimization of the use of existing agricultural land is inevitable. The present manuscript describes and discusses the current protein consumption and production in Indonesia. It presents the levels predicted for 2035, which would imply a strong gap between consumption and production. Alternatives therefore need to be considered to avoid protein shortage in the future. These would include the use of new biomass resources, utilization of agricultural residues as alternative protein sources for feed and other nonfood applications, and biorefining of biomass sources.</p

Production of hydrophobic amino acids from biobased resources : wheat gluten and rubber seed proteins

Protein hydrolysis enables production of peptides and free amino acids that are suitable for usage in food and feed or can be used as precursors for bulk chemicals. Several essential amino acids for food and feed have hydrophobic side chains; this property may also be exploited for subsequent separation. Here, we present methods for selective production of hydrophobic amino acids from proteins. Selectivity can be achieved by selection of starting material, selection of hydrolysis conditions, and separation of achieved hydrolysate. Several protease combinations were applied for hydrolysis of rubber seed protein concentrate, wheat gluten, and bovine serum albumin (BSA). High degree of hydrolysis (>50 %) could be achieved. Hydrophobic selectivity was influenced by the combination of proteases and by the extent of hydrolysis. Combination of Pronase and Peptidase R showed the highest selectivity towards hydrophobic amino acids, roughly doubling the content of hydrophobic amino acids in the products compared to the original substrates. Hydrophobic selectivity of 0.6 mol-hydrophobic/mol-total free amino acids was observed after 6 h hydrolysis of wheat gluten and 24 h hydrolysis of rubber seed proteins and BSA. The results of experiments with rubber seed proteins and wheat gluten suggest that this process can be applied to agro-industrial residues