Local crops, global scale
Why are plant-based foods in Asia unable to achieve true cost parity with conventional protein sources? The answer might surprise you. The industry relies heavily on importing its primary protein isolates and concentrates from the West, locking the region into volatile global supply chains with high costs. Even with the solution growing everywhere in our fields and farmlands, this dependency prevails. Millions of smallholder farmers across India, China, and Southeast Asia are already cultivating chickpeas, mung beans, millets, and peanuts. Scaling these indigenous crops as commercial ingredients for plant-based alternatives can cut out massive shipping loops, naturally restore local soil health, and create new markets for agricultural byproducts.
This reliance on imports is no accident. It is the result of decades of centralised infrastructure built in the West, where global agribusinesses spent billions optimising massive factories specifically designed to process soy and wheat at an unbeatable scale. Because these Western supply chains are highly standardised and mature, it has always been cheaper and easier for Asian food brands to simply buy from the existing global playbook. Currently, the region lacks the agricultural value chain that has been optimised for smart protein production, from crops with functional traits to specialised processing facilities needed to turn native crops into industrial-grade food ingredients.
Achieving true cost, taste, and climate parity ultimately depends on breaking through the structural bottlenecks holding back these local crops. To build an industry that can realistically compete with the established global playbook, the sector must change its approach to the entire supply chain. Success requires a coordinated effort to stabilise crop genetics, re-engineer extraction methods, and completely rethink food formulations, all at the same time. In the seventh edition of GFI India and GFI APAC’s Alt Protein Dialogue series, the webinar “Leveraging Asia’s indigenous crops for alternative protein product development” brought together industry and academic experts to examine how we can localise alternative protein value chains from the ground up.
Bottleneck 1: Genetic consistency
The first critical hurdle is establishing absolute genetic consistency, which alternative protein manufacturers require to run their facilities predictably. Currently, local crop yields and protein content fluctuate wildly due to climate stress. Extreme heatwaves (>40°C) routinely cause mung bean protein yields to crash from 25% to 18%. To solve this, Dr. Millicent Smith at the University of Queensland uses drone sensors and mass spectrometry to map traits for heat resilience and specific processing functionalities (like gelation or solubility) without sacrificing yield. Her team also uncovered a 40,000-fold genetic variation in hexanol, the compound behind the “green beanie” off-flavour, enabling them to naturally breed out bitterness. By feeding this genomic data into machine learning algorithms, scientists can simulate optimal breeding combinations in a computer, shortening multi-decade timelines down to just five years.
Bottleneck 2: Crop-specific extraction
Once the raw materials are standardised, the next step involves extracting the protein efficiently while navigating the unique chemical properties of each crop. For instance, peanuts contain high oil levels that trap protein during isolation, while chickpea starch absorbs massive amounts of water, creating a thick, often unmanageable paste in industrial mixing tanks. Mung beans present an economic challenge, yielding only 20 kilograms of protein for every 100 kilograms of raw material. Dr. Subramoni Hariharan at Proeon Foods emphasises that finding a commercial market for the remaining 80 kilograms of starch and fibre is the financial foundation required to reach price parity with soy. While the mature soy supply chain operates nearly at a 90% overall system reliability score, the highly fragmented mung bean value chain scores just 36%, creating a significant commercial opportunity for companies that invest in crop-specific processing.
Bottleneck 3: Formulating for the Asian palate
With the protein successfully isolated, the final challenge is transforming it into an appealing food product with realistic texture and nutrition. Extruded soy protein on its own becomes dense and chewy. While product developers traditionally look to wheat gluten to build structure, its high elasticity creates a rubbery mouthfeel akin to chewing gum. To fix this texture bottleneck, Asia’s food tech sector needs a formulation strategy that shifts away from wheat entirely and unlocks the superior processing properties of other native crops. At TDU Bengaluru, Dr. Gurmeet Singh is pioneering a formulation strategy that bypasses gluten dependency by aligning the unique functionalities of climate-hardy local millets with soy isolates. When processed at 120°C, the synchronised pasting characteristics of sorghum and pearl millet enable their starches to gelatinise into intricate, fibrous networks, effectively tempering the rubbery elasticity often associated with pure soy. Thermal extrusion simultaneously degrades anti-nutrients like phytic acid to unlock bioavailable iron and zinc. While initial testing on related plant fibres shows a dramatic 50% reduction in post-prandial glycemic responses, the team is currently positioning these specialised millet matrices for full clinical trials to validate their distinct metabolic advantages for regional consumers at a highly competitive price point.
A unified frontier
No one technological advancement can succeed in isolation. Plant breeders, process engineers, and food scientists must align their strategies because a breakthrough will only succeed with support from the others. For instance, a perfectly bred crop is useless if run through an extraction system designed for Western imported soy, just as a final product cannot scale without a reliable local supply chain.
Beyond the crops discussed above, the Asian subcontinent possesses a vast array of underutilised agricultural assets like fava beans, horse gram, winged beans, and jackfruit seeds that have yet to be commercialised for food manufacturing. Because these indigenous crops have not been extensively studied by global companies, they represent an exciting new frontier where the first regional pioneers to map their processing parameters can secure a distinct intellectual property advantage. Turning this potential into reality requires a systemic shift where plant breeders optimise for manufacturing traits rather than raw volumetric yield , engineers design crop-specific machinery, and the government invests the capital required to build regional pilot facilities while incentivising farmers to grow indigenous crops.