Professor, team get $1.8M grant to turn surplus sweet potatoes into plant-based milk
By Dean Hensley
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BOONE, North Carolina (WLOS) — Surplus North Carolina sweet potatoes that were usually left to rot in the fields and cost farmers millions of dollars are now being put to good use, thanks to an Appalachian State University professor and his research team.
Professor Dr. Brett Taubman and his team received an NCInnovation $1.8 million grant to transform the sweet potatoes into a first-of-its-kind plant-based milk, according to a news release. On average, each year approximately 63 million pounds of sweet potatoes are left to rot in the fields, and that costs farmers an estimated $13.2 million each year.
But with this new initiative, which the team is calling Rootsii, this will forever change.
“The Rootsii project brings home the value of public impact research at App. State,” said Dr. Christine Ogilvie Hendren, vice chancellor of research and innovation at App State, in the news release. “NCInnovation’s funding lends critical support to this novel approach of converting the unused material of a key North Carolina crop into a viable and nutritious product line.”
Taubman founded Rootsii in partnership with Fermentation Sciences Lab manager Daniel Parker.
According to the university, Rootsii will have more options than just milk. It will also produce creamers, ice cream, yogurt and other fermented foods such as sweet potato-based miso and fermented hot sauce, the release said.
The bi-regional production model features a bulk processing facility in Eastern North Carolina, where the majority of sweet potatoes are grown, along with a production facility in Boone, the university said.
The project, which has been under development since June 2024, is currently in the proof-of-concept stage, with an aim of being market-ready within two years. Taubman said he’s optimistic that the company, at scale, could create hundreds of jobs and seize a portion of the expanding plant-based milk market, which is projected to grow from $22.5 billion globally in 2025 to more than $40 billion by 2035, according to market estimates.
“The larger plant-based milk industry is already a multibillion-dollar industry, and in the next 10 years, it is expected to almost double. So it’s a huge growth industry,” said Taubman, who directs the fermentation sciences program in App State’s Department of Chemistry and Fermentation Sciences.
Four undergraduate student researchers have worked on developing the milk and related products, helping test production processes and formulations for yield, nutritional content, flavor, texture and other factors. The NCInnovation grant will fund four student researchers for a total of 1,800 hours per year over two years.
More information about Rootsii is available at the Appalachian State University website.
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