Fork The System

Renan Danielski on using sugar beets for cellular agriculture

• Sherry Shu

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Our sixteenth guest is Dr. Renan Danielski, a New Harvest Postdoctoral Fellow at Lethbridge Polytechnic’s Advanced Post-Harvest Technology Centre, specializing in the upcycling of agricultural co-products into processing inputs for cellular agriculture. He earned his Ph.D. in Food Science from Memorial University of Newfoundland, receiving the prestigious Governor General’s Gold Medal for academic excellence. Dr. Danielski’s expertise includes encapsulation of bioactive compounds, bioactivity assessment of nutraceutical compounds, and functional food development. 

Welcome to Fork The System — a podcast spotlighting the innovators, researchers, and advocacy leaders reimagining how we feed the world.

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Speaker 1

I have access to farmers. Yeah. So I talk to a lot of farmers, a lot of growers, and uh when I explain what precision fermentation is, for example, they think it's pretty cool. And they see this as more of an opportunity, you know, like a chance to uh make the agricultural field uh modern.

Speaker 2

Welcome back to Fork the System, a podcast spotlighting the innovators, researchers, and advocacy leaders reimagining how we feed the world. I'm your host, Sherry Shu, exploring how we can build food systems that are sustainable, ethical, and free from animal suffering. I'm here with Dr. Renan Danielski. Dr. Renan Danielski is a new harvest postdoctoral fellow at Lethridge Polytechnics Advanced Post-Harvest Technology Center, specializing in the upcycling of agricultural co-products into processing units for cellular agriculture. He earned his PhD in food science from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, receiving the prestigious Governor General's Gold Medal for Academic Excellence. Dr. Danielski's expertise includes encapsulation of bioactive compounds, bioactivity assessment of nutraceutical compounds, and functional food development. So, Dr. Renan, it's great to speak with you today.

Speaker 1

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2

You have a very impressive academic history in your field, and you've pursued a very interesting area of study, which is in food science, in engineering of various inputs. So I'm curious what inspired this career path? It's not one people hear about a lot.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Well, uh I actually wanted to be a journalist. Oh right. So like when I went to university, uh, that was my major. I was majoring in journalism. And I was uh one year into it, and I started feeling like I was too much in my comfort zone, you know. And uh back in school, in high school, I wasn't really good at chemistry, uh, biology, biochemistry, you know. And I was like, I think university is supposed to be difficult, right? I think I'm supposed to struggle a little bit, and I'm finding this major too easy for me. I'm not saying that the profession is easy, but I wasn't really getting out of my comfort zone, and I felt that I needed that a little bit more of challenge. So at the time, my dad was a dairy farmer. Oh, and uh, so I was in contact somewhat with food science, a little bit more on the production side, but then I started, you know, like, huh, what if I do something related to food, you know? And uh my bachelor was actually in dairy science, it wasn't food science, which is pretty much the same, but you know, uh it's just more specific specialized dairy. And because of what my dad was doing, I was like, Yeah, let's see, let's try it out. So I switched to dairy science as a major, and uh I really started liking it, and then I started using dairy science as a platform to expand my horizons a little bit more. So after uh I finished my bachelor's, I did a summer internship with Coca-Cola, and that was like my first experience with something that wasn't dairy related, and I really liked it. So after I finished uh my bachelor's, I went into a master's program, I finished my master's, and I just kept going. So during my master's, uh I started working with bioactive compounds and fruit byproducts. So I've been working with byproducts since my master's, and I became really fascinated about, you know, like waste upcycling and uh bioactive compounds, so phenolic compounds, keratinides, like all those uh minor molecules that we don't hear a lot about. I became fascinated with them. So that kind of became my uh research line and uh something I carried forward into my PhD, and I'm also doing a little bit that uh now in my postdoc.

Renan

That's so interesting that you made such a drastic pivot from what you originally were planning to study. I I know there's plenty of stories of people who kind of change their career path drastically, but that's a pretty brave decision, like this notion that you know I want more of a challenge, so I'm gonna go for something that is harder, but I can make it work.

Speaker 1

And you know, like something I really like about food science is that it's multidisciplinary. So you have a little bit of chemistry, you have biology, biochemistry, you have math, you have physics. So I really like the nature of the discipline because it's so rich and you get to experience so many disciplines, which is something I was lacking in in my first major, right? Like this diversity that's pretty amazing to me because uh you you get exposed to so many disciplines, so you become quite well-versed in a lot of subjects. So that's also something that fascinates me about food chemistry and food science in general.

Speaker 2

For sure. No, that's the one thing everyone's always asked me when I even like started this podcast or started exploring issues of food sustainability, is like for me, it's also this multidisciplinary nature of the problem, the fact that food affects like economics and public health and issues of nutrition, the environment, like all these different things that kind of tie into food because food is everything, like food affects everything. So very similar to how I think food science is so interdisciplinary and requires so many different scientific fields to come together. On your research, then, that you kind of started talking about, but would love to learn more. For someone who maybe isn't super familiar with food science, is coming from an outsider's perspective. What are you researching at Lethbridge Polytechnic?

Speaker 1

So I'm working on sugar beets. So for those of you who don't know it, uh sugar beets they are quite different from table beets. So the, you know, like those little purple ones. Okay. Uh they are white and they are huge. You know, when they are fully mature, they can weigh up to two kilos.

Speaker 2

Are they uh sold in the grocery store or they used?

Speaker 1

They are not. They are not, they are an industrial crap. Uh you know, because sugar beets, they are not very exciting in terms of nutritional composition, right? Okay, so it's pretty much water and sucrose, which we know as table sugar. Most of the sugar uh in the world comes from sugar cane, but not here in Canada because we cannot grow sugar cane. Uh, sugar cane grows uh tropical climates, and here we have temperate climate. So sugar beets are more appropriate for the kind of climate we have here in Canada.

Speaker 2

Um a lot of the let's say products made in Canada uh that require sugar, is it being used with sugar beets? Are we extracting from sugar beets to put as the ingredient we use in Canadian production? And like, are there products on our shelves that have sugar beets instead of sugar cane? Or like to what extent were are we eating sugar beets in our day-to-day lives? It depends.

Speaker 1

It depends because you see, uh, we have only one sugar beet hub here in Canada, okay, which is Southern Auburn, right? So sugar beets is mostly produced here and in Ontario. But the thing is, the the sugar beet we produce in Ontario doesn't stay in Canada, it gets exported. So the only sugar that comes from sugar beets for domestic consumption comes from the beets that are produced here in southern Aboriginal. But most of the sugar you're going to see, you know, like on the grocery store or that serves as ingredients in other food products, they will probably be imported. They will probably come from sugarcane because that's about 80% of all sugars produced in the world.

Speaker 2

Makes sense.

Speaker 1

Yeah, so only 20% comes from sugar beets. So one of the objectives of my project is really expanding the uses for sugar beets beyond sugar extraction and refining. And there's also a problem with storage. And this is how the whole thing started because the way the sugar beets are stored is quite rudimentary. Okay, so they are stored in big piles outdoors, so they are subjected to all sorts of environmental changes, right? Is there a reason they're not put indoors? It's impossible, they are too big.

Speaker 2

Oh, okay. I see. That's a pretty um, I guess that's an expected reason, but that's like uh a pretty surprising reason.

Speaker 1

Oh no, no, no. Yeah, it's uh I I didn't know about this before starting to work with uh sugar beets. Okay, but it's it would be impossible. The the piles they are just huge, you know, like that they are gigantic, so it it wouldn't really be possible to to store them inside. You you wouldn't have the physical space for it. I see. Okay. But if they are exposed to the climate, uh a lot of things can go round, right? So one is uh the the sugar beets that are in the middle of the pile, they can get damaged. Okay, right? So the surface gets damaged, and that kind of opens a spot for uh microbial contamination. You can lose quality. And uh when we say lose quality in the sugar beet context, we mean losing sugar, losing extractable sucrose.

Speaker 2

Yeah, like their economic value or like the economic value you can get from them decrease, the yield, right.

Speaker 1

Exactly. Yeah, so this is one of the problems, and also the climate, uh the temperature fluctuations. So the temperature is one of the most important factors for declining sucrose and sugar beets.

Speaker 3

Oh, right.

Speaker 1

So if if you get warmer temperature, uh you're probably losing sugar. And then you have all the you know, like the hot cold cycles, and uh also some warm spells you you have when you're transitioning from uh winter to spring. And uh all of those they really degrade the quality of beets.

Speaker 2

That's probably getting like worse because of climate change, I'm assuming, right? With warmer temperatures, the yields are of sugar probably increasingly declining.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah. So uh one of the the possible solutions that they come came up with, and and here we have the Alberta sugar beet growers. So they are this farmers association that represents uh all sugar beet growers here in the region. And uh they partner up with my lab and they created a new storage system for sugar beets. So what they do is instead of piling them up outside, they pre-process those beets. Ah, okay. So they basically turn them into mash.

Speaker 3

Interesting.

Speaker 1

So they turn beets into mash and they feed this mash inside a bioreactor.

Speaker 3

Oh, okay.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Which looks like, you know, like those uh bioreactors you use for uh fermentation, but it's more for storage.

Speaker 2

What happens to it inside the bioreactor? Is it like a chemical with a bioreactor that ferments? I'm assuming it's like the temperatures and the moisture conditions are engineered to ensure the food undergoes certain chemical processes. So, like what types of similar processes are you trying to replicate in mashing up the uh sugar beet?

Speaker 1

So, with our bioreactor, we don't actually want reaction.

Speaker 3

Oh, I think so.

Speaker 1

Yeah, the process is designed to stop chemical and enzymatic reactions. Because if you have reactions, the sugars they will be consumed by so it's an anti bioreactor. That's a great definition. I really like this.

Speaker 3

Okay, okay.

Speaker 1

Well, I actually like to call it a storage reactor, okay, right. Not really a bioreactor because you don't you don't want biological reaction happening there, right? So we want to stop that, right? So what we do is we have controlled conditions of uh pH and temperature, and it's under constant stirring, so it doesn't, you know, like uh deposit on the bottom of the reactor. We we don't want that, right? So it's under constant motion, and also the oxidation reduction conditions they are controlled as well. We just finished a long-term trial, so we were able to store this feedstock for more than six months without significant sugar decline. That's great. Okay, yeah, awesome. But then when you do this, you significantly change the sugar extraction process. Okay, right. Because during a conventional sugar extraction process, you never turn beets into mash. This doesn't exist. And they check for the quality, and then uh it goes to this uh slicing station. So they slice them into it, it looks like French fries, you know, a little bit like French fries, right? Uh and then you pass this through uh a water tank and it's uh uh hot water, I think about 70, 80 degrees Celsius.

Speaker 4

Oh, okay.

Speaker 1

Uh, and you you keep there in a countercurrent uh mode for about 40, 50 minutes, uh, and that's how you extract sugar. So the sugar uh leaches out from the beets into the water, and then you concentrate uh this extract and it becomes like a thick syrup, uh, which you use for uh crystallizing, and that's how you get the sugar crystals in a nutshell.

Speaker 3

Makes sense.

Speaker 1

Yeah, you never destroy the physical structure of the beets. You you kind of maintain the matrix, right? But with sugar beet mash, you are completely destroying it.

Speaker 3

Right.

Speaker 1

But at the same time, you're making uh the sugar molecules more available, right? Because you have a higher surface. So uh it's a trade-off. But so if you're destroying it, uh you really need to control those pH and temperature conditions because you you you open the window for microbial contamination. So you need to make sure that your process is really hygienic. You don't want microbes in there because you're gonna lose your sugar.

Speaker 2

Now that this problem has arisen, which is like you've physically changed the crystalline structure or the structure in general of the um sugar beet. Do you have to re-engineer the entire process to then extract out the more available sugar? Or is it like just altering the existing process in a way that kind of can make use of the changed physical structure, but you can still extract the sugar that way?

Speaker 1

No, you don't have to change the whole thing. Okay. Uh you would probably uh need to add uh a centrifugation stab uh for the bioreactor, right? Because then you separate the soluble uh from the insoluble components.

Speaker 3

Ah, okay. That makes sense.

Speaker 1

And you yeah, so you kind of have the extract already, right? You don't have to, you know, like uh mix the beads to have that sugar extract, right? Because you've been doing that inside the bioreactor already, right? So it's already pre-done. Yeah, so yeah, you you you just uh you just have to replace a step. So instead of the normal sugar extraction, you have uh centrifugation.

Speaker 3

Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 1

That's pretty much it. Yeah, so you you just need to do some adjustments uh in in the downstream processing, yeah, but not really alter the whole thing, yeah.

Speaker 2

Makes sense for people who don't know what centrifugation is. That's the thing where you like spin it really fast, and then the difference like is it the solubility or the density of the material? The density, the difference, right? The density, so then it's like then you can kind of get the uh the stuff that's actually has the all the sugar in it, right? Like the most exactly okay, exactly makes sense, yeah.

Speaker 1

Very cool, okay. It is, uh, but you see, you still have a lot of stuff there, so you extracted the sugar by centrifugation, right? Uh, but you still have the insoluble part. So, what's in there? Well, we have all kinds of fiber. So we have pectin, we have cellulose, we have hemicellulose, we have ligandin, we have phenolic compounds. And uh then you ask me, so what does the industry do with this type of material? Well, it usually gets uh palletized and goes to animal feed, which is kind of a low-value application, right? Because those components they can be quite valuable for uh if you're using this for human applications, right? Right. Uh so one of the things that I'm trying to do is recycle this byproduct, right? And then you start thinking, what can you do with it? And one of the possibilities is to use this uh in cellular agriculture.

Speaker 3

Oh, okay, yeah.

Speaker 1

Right. So you see, now I'm getting to my actual work.

Speaker 2

Yeah, took a while, but the buildup was very helpful.

Speaker 1

Yeah, so one of the applications uh we thought about was precision fermentation, because the uh sugar beet mash is really rich in fermentable sugars and also other uh compounds, some bioactive compounds. And maybe uh you could use this as a carbon source to feed microbes for precision fermentation.

Speaker 2

Oh, okay, interesting.

Speaker 1

Yes.

Speaker 2

So yeah, just to oh, not not to interrupt, but like to catch people up on precision fermentation, because I think most people are somewhat aware, but like the the gist of it is that we're trying to create new compounds, right, with um existing microbes that digest a certain compound into something else.

Speaker 1

That was that was a a great explanation. So uh, you know, like you have these uh existing microbial strains, yeah, and you do some gene editing, you know, some kind of genetic modification. Right, okay. So that specific, I don't know, yeast bacteria can produce the target compound. So you're like, okay, I want this bacteria to produce uh insulin, right? Uh, because the synthetic insulin we use today is produced by precision fermentation. So it it's not a new process, you know, it's it's something that's out there that we're trying to uh expand the portfolio, right? So now we have a lot of studies on synthesizing dietary proteins like milk proteins, for example, whey protein, right? Right, so you don't have to actually extract that from whey anymore. You have the building block and you can synthesize milk without ever needing to milk a cow, for example.

Speaker 2

Right, yeah. So you see this research as like an input in that process.

Speaker 1

Exactly, exactly, because you need to feed those microbes, right? So those microbes they need uh carbon, they need nitrogen, uh, they need minerals, uh bioactive compounds. So one of the ways that we can possibly use the sugar beet mash is by providing uh this carbon source to them, right? Because it's really rich in sugars that bacteria and yeast are able to ferment. Okay. And uh, why would this solve a problem for uh the biomanufacturing sector? Because one of those problems is scaling up. It's really challenging, you know, like to create a biomanufacturing process and take this to the large scale. Right. And one of the things hindering this kind of scale up are the feedstocks. We are currently using high grade chemicals, and those high grade chemicals uh they come from the uh pharmaceutical industry or from the biomedical field, so they're really, really expensive. You can only use them at bank scale or pilot scale, but it's not really economic feasible to use them on a large scale. So you need something food grade, you need something that you can mass produce. So perhaps if we take something that's food grade, like sugar beet mash, and something that's already being produced by another industry, maybe we can boost the growth of the biomanufacturing sector as well.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that makes sense. So, how has the research been going in terms of like how long have you been working on this? Problem. I know research is notoriously really slow. So, like, what's the progress been like so far? And do you see a potential for commercialization and kind of introducing this actually to the industry? Um, by what timeline? And do you think, or do you think there's any sorts of like pushbacks that's going to happen that are going to slow down that process?

Speaker 1

Yeah. So uh I've been doing this for one year. Nice. I mean, not doing experiments for one year, uh, because you know, like after we we start a certain work, it takes some time until we can actually go to the lab and do the experiments. For sure. Um, but you know, like the characterization part is uh almost done. Oh, cool. So yeah, we we have screened sugar beet mash from different locations, uh different towns here in southern Burr. Uh because we we also want to see if there's uh differences in terms of oh, uh this location has higher sugar, this one has lower, uh, because we want to avoid uh batch to batch variability, right?

Speaker 3

Make sense.

Speaker 1

We want something standard so for the sample, like because yeah, because this is gonna be used uh in in an industrial process, so it needs to be standardized, right? Uh and and the the the results were great. Oh, awesome! Yeah, and uh I was expecting that actually because uh you know, like the seeds, uh the the sugar beet seeds uh planted here in Southern Europe, they are the same for all the farmers, okay, right? That there's like one supplier that distributes to all the farmers. Okay, so we weren't really expecting huge differences, right? In general, uh the composition is pretty much the same. And uh another thing that we were interested in was to see if when you turn intact beets into mash, do we have any nutritional loss? So one of the things we did is was to compare uh the composition of the whole beets with the composition of the mash produced with them. Uh-huh. Okay. Uh also we didn't see many differences. That's okay. So it was it was pretty much the same composition, which was great. So it means that this type of pre-processing doesn't really uh cause any drastic nutritional loss. So that that's pretty much the stage we we are in right now. So we're finishing this part. So the next part will be the actual testing of this feedstock as a fermentation substrate.

unknown

Okay.

Speaker 3

Okay.

Speaker 1

And if those bench tests are successful, meaning uh the sugar beet mash works great as a fermentation feedstock, uh, then uh on the third stage we plan to uh scale up the process.

Speaker 2

How many uh precision fermentation labs do we have in Canada? Do you see like a big Canadian market for this type of technology? Are there many buyers or is precision fermentation still like dominated by a few players? And you'll you're going to kind of target like the main labs that do this in Canada? Like, I just kind of want to get a scope of the the Canadian food innovation space right now in this field.

Speaker 1

Yeah. So it's nice that you mentioned this because there's a great resource for like anyone who's interested in you know, like the general infrastructure assessment of our biotechnology sector. Okay. So New Harvest, which is uh one of my funders, they have this directory. Uh because the something I forgot to mention is that my project is a part of a bigger initiative. The the CAPE project, uh, this is actually it spans many universities. So like you have like several universities in Canada under this project, and each one of them is checking a different side stream. So my side stream is sugar beat mash, but you do have other groups working with uh canola meal, uh hemp seed meal. So the goal of the project is to develop a supply chain for biomanufacturing, cellar agriculture here in Canada. Okay, because that's one of the weak points that their research has uh identified. So they do have this infrastructure assessment. So you can go online, so you can search uh CAPE infrastructure directory, you can Google this, and you're gonna find a spreadsheet with all the facilities we have uh in Canada. I think about 70 something percent uh of all biomanufacturing uh facilities, of all bioreactors uh in Canada, they support microbial fermentation.

Speaker 2

Okay, so that's actually quite substantial, which is it's quite substantial.

Speaker 1

Uh and uh something interesting about our biomanufacturing sector is that most of it is made up of uh SMEs, so small and medium enterprises. Right, yeah, right. So one of the difficulties is that they don't really have access to large-scale reactors, they do have uh the small scale ones to develop their technology, but it gets really difficult when they want to transition from small scale to large scale, and this is what they call the innovation valley of death. Oh, it's because it's okay, it's a big challenge, you know, like to get your project funded so you can upgrade the technology readiness.

Speaker 2

Is the only way for SMEs to become larger enterprises to get funding from like the government, or is it just in general they can also, I don't know, like get more B2B buyers and then kind of like fund themselves into growth? Or is that kind of just not possible right now given the like nicheness of the field?

Speaker 1

The field is pretty uh immature, right? Right? So everything is new, so people are still like trying to figure out how they can fund their initiatives, right? Okay, so you do have a few uh government grants, uh, but most of them are like seed projects.

Speaker 2

Oh, okay. That's why there's so many SMEs and not big ones.

Speaker 1

Yes, okay, yes, yeah so I mean it it's great for developing your technology, but not so great when you actually want to commercialize it, right? I see. One of the ideas we have is to match the expertise. So for instance, you have uh the agricultural field, which is great with infrastructure, with logistics, right? And then you have the biomanufacturing sector, which is great with uh innovation, with technology uh development. Uh and what if you can match them? So the biomanufacturing could leverage the infrastructure of the agri-food industry, something that's already there. And at the same time, the agricultural field could use the expertise of the biomanufacturing sector for modernizing and also for increasing opportunities for uh revenues. So, for example, the sugar beet mash. My gosh, you have like so many other applications besides sugar extraction, so it would be beneficial for both sectors, right? So this shared infrastructure would be a possible solution to overcome this lack of uh access to pilot scale facilities.

Speaker 2

That makes sense. Do you think that both the Canadian government and also, let's say, these agri-food players that you're talking about are receptive to innovation in precision fermentation and food tech? Because like my perception is I've heard some good things about how the government of Canada has kind of established itself as a greater player in the food tech space. There's been some exciting investments and funding promised in the region. But I also know that legacy food players might see like food tech as a threat. So then do you think Canada will move positively towards development or are there going to be kind of pushbacks from these players, pushback from the government or lack of funding to actually accelerate these types of partnerships?

Speaker 1

No, I don't really think there's a huge resistance. Okay, to be honest. I have access to farmers. Yeah. I talk to a lot of farmers, a lot of growers, and uh when I explain what precision fermentation is, for example, uh they think it's pretty cool. And they see this as more of an opportunity, you know, like a chance to uh make the agricultural field uh modern. So I think all this resistance is more of a thing of the past, uh, but like looking forward, I think it's just a matter of uh really explaining to people what those processes are, and uh especially with precision fermentation, uh it's something that's part of our daily lives, we just don't know about it, right?

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. So just like destigmatizing it almost a little bit, just be like everything is so many things are made with this.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and uh I I don't really see this as a replacement, I see this as an addition. I I don't I don't I I think there's space for everyone, right? Okay, a lot of people think that this is coming to replace uh the conventional traditional meat that we have. I don't think it will ever completely replace it. Fair, yeah. It's I mean, if if it really becomes a thing, it's it's going to reduce right animal slaughter and like all the environmental concerns we have regarding uh the traditional meat production.

Speaker 3

Yep.

Speaker 1

Uh, but you're still gonna have uh people who will only consume traditional meat, exactly.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1

So I don't I don't think it's something that will disappear. And uh another misconception is that oh, so uh farmers will be replaced. No, no, yeah, they need to be integrated into this new process, for sure. They they cannot be replaced because we do need their expertise.

Speaker 2

It's they also need to contribute to the supply chain, like someone needs to grow the beats, for instance, there's for sure, for sure.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and and the the technology needs their input to be developed, right? Yeah, because I I don't think one thing replaces the other. I think they are complementary.

Speaker 2

Okay. Great. Well, thank you so much, Renan. I think I don't have any other big questions, but the thing that you said that will stick with me for a while, uh, as someone who's interested in this whole space is this notion of like there is space for everyone. It's too often it's pitted as like farmers or traditional agriculture against new, novel, innovative agriculture or whatever. And like it just doesn't have to be that way. Like you're so correct that you could just have enough space for everyone. And if the end goal is just to create a world where agriculture is more sustainable, so we don't disrupt all the existing ways we make food and meat and all these things, but we just create an alternative path that allows for all those environmental impacts and social impacts to be slightly reduced, that's sufficient. Thank you so much for telling us the story of your research today. I learned a lot and I'm really excited for the future of your project to see like new updates and for the growth of the Canadian precision fermentation and food tech space. That's it for this episode of Fork the System. If you have a guest or topic you'd like to hear about, share your ideas using the feedback form linked below. Until next time.