Top Asian scientists converge on Singapore, unite behind alt protein roadmap
Renowned food researchers and biotechnologists from seven countries, including China, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, recently descended on the National University of Singapore with one shared mission: to unite around an action plan to get alternative proteins to taste and price parity.
The AltProtein Asia summit, which was co-hosted by GFI APAC and the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, was created to convene top scientists and explore how R&D and technological innovation can scale up production of delicious and affordable plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated meats. Timed to coincide with the conclusion of Singapore International Agri-Food Week, the exclusive event drew researchers from around the world.
Reaching parity for a given product requires navigating a continuous trade-off between lowering costs and improving sensory characteristics. Support for R&D and innovation in high-impact technical barriers is critical to move products (solid green line) closer to taste and price parity (dotted line).
As GFI APAC Head of Science and Technology Wasamon Nutakul, PhD, declared in her opening address to attendees, the first step towards achieving this goal was to identify the specific scientific barriers causing existing alternative proteins to fall short, so that subject matter experts can set achievable, time-bound plans to overcome them.
What kinds of barriers?
When compiling GFI’s proposed 15-year technical roadmap, our global scientists reviewed 20+ primary analyses, interviewed hundreds of food industry stakeholders, analysed real-world market data, and extracted information from peer-reviewed publications, research webinars, conferences, and workshops. Summit attendees were among the first external stakeholders to get an advance look at the full map, which will be revealed publicly in early 2027.
GFI APAC’s Patricia Neves, Maanasa Ravikumar, and Wasamon Nutakul guided breakout sessions.
The technical barriers GFI’s scientists identified varied by alternative protein production technology and product format. Chicken nuggets made predominantly with plant-based ingredients, for instance, currently face fewer obstacles to reaching price and taste parity than salmon sashimi made using cultivated animal cells. Why? Because blind taste tests show that existing plant-based nuggets already perform fairly well when measured against their conventional counterparts, leaving relatively modest areas for improvement in product cost, texture, flavour, and appearance.
By contrast, salmon products made with cultivated cells must overcome more fundamental challenges related to the cost of cell culture media ingredients and efficiency of input use, which currently make foods created using these ingredients prohibitively expensive for mainstream consumers. That’s why it’s critical that researchers allocate their time and resources towards the areas of greatest and most urgent need.
Cultivated salmon sashimi, courtesy of Bluu (Ann Brauns/Wim Jansen)
In addition to roadmap workshops and networking sessions, the summit also featured an esteemed roster of guest speakers, including Dr. Ding Shijie, CEO of Chinese cultivated meat startup Joes Future Food; Dr. Gerlis von Haugwitz, a product manager at CREMER Sustainable Nutrition’s FermBase by CREMER; and Mr. Peemdej Utsahajit, director of open innovation at Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods. Each outlined the technical and commercial constraints they’ve personally encountered on their journeys to commercial scale.
Mr. Peemdej Utsahajit of CP Foods shows how hype cycles play out for emerging innovations.
So how’d it go?
Attendees told organisers they were grateful for the opportunity to exchange knowledge with experts from other technology platforms, debate, talk through the most promising solutions to shared challenges, and gain greater visibility into what their peers are up to. They also noted that the breakout sessions were a valuable platform for collaborating with colleagues from different disciplines and better understanding how everyone’s research is interconnected. That substantially reduces the risk that scientists inadvertently duplicate each other’s efforts, squander finite resources on dead-end research areas, or blindly operate based on short-term goals without keeping an eye on the industry’s long-term trajectory.
As they left Singapore with a shared compass in hand, researchers expressed confidence that they could navigate this critical period of growth—not through trial and error, but by leveraging their collective knowledge and the momentum of driving together towards the same destination.
Onwards,
Ryan Huling
Senior Writer | GFI APAC