Biodiversity from field to plate
At the crossroads between agronomy, ecology, and health, Didier Bazile is proposing an innovative personal project aimed at creating bread made from a blend of quinoa flours. He has two objectives: to preserve the biodiversity of quinoa and to offer consumers a healthy food product. This project was a favorite of the 2020 jury of Montpellier's Booster Innovation competition.
A bread of exceptional nutritional quality, containing three times more protein than wheat flour bread, all the essential amino acids, and gluten-free. Was this your dream? Didier Bazile made it happen. A researcher at CIRAD, he works on preserving the agricultural biodiversity of food crops. "I was working on participatory selection programs for millet and sorghum in West Africa in the early 2000s, where I helped set up community seed banks with farmers," recalls Didier Bazile. "That's when I was asked to contribute my expertise on peasant seed systems for quinoa in the Andes, where biodiversity, still little known, was collapsing."
Quinoa actually comes in more than 6,000 varieties selected by generations of farmers. "Despite this great biological and cultural diversity, only a tiny fraction of this agricultural heritage is found on our supermarket shelves, reduced to large white quinoa grains, at best expanded to three colors," laments the specialist. "That's why I developed a personal project called Quinoa-div, taking a holistic approach to agricultural biodiversity to reconnect agriculture, food, and health."
Preserving biodiversity
To reverse this loss of biodiversity and promote the nutritional value of quinoa, Didier Bazile decided to create a flour for bread-making, made from a blend of hundreds of varieties of quinoa. The problem was that it is gluten that gives wheat its bread-making properties, and quinoa does not contain gluten. "We had to find a way to give quinoa back its famous bread-making ability." Some processes already exist, but they require numerous food additives: "That's the beauty of the recipe I developed, because it uses no food additives, no eggs, no palm oil, no lactose, and no highly allergenic nuts." The researcher reveals that the secret formula involves an optimized food technology process based on cassava.
Secret recipe
"The result is a genuine gluten-free bread containing more than 75% quinoa, whereas existing products contain no more than 10 to 20%," says Didier Bazile, a member ofthe Atelier de Claret innovation hub, whose personal project is supported by the AgroValoMED incubator at Montpellier SupAgro. "Quinoa is truly a superfood with exceptional nutritional value. It can even be considered a functional food, a food that heals." The researcher has also collaborated with the faculty of pharmacy to develop a healthy and safe product for celiac patients and those allergic to gluten, who represent 1% of the world's population. "Meeting the requirements of these celiac patients is a guarantee of quality that will expand my target population to include the 10% of people who are gluten intolerant, as well as the 20% who are vegetarians and vegans, and the 30% of organic consumers who demand products with high environmental value in addition to nutritional value," emphasizes the specialist.
Superfood
Next step: create the company that will produce this "Mix-Quinoa panification" and distribute it through networks of specialty organic and health food stores and pharmacies. "Starting in fall 2021, " says the researcher, who already has plans to develop other quinoa-based products. "I'm already working on another flour mix for baking, and I'm also planning to adapt my Mix-Quinoa for pasta, couscous, and 100% quinoa purée." These are all assets that will enable the company to continuously diversify in a global quinoa market that is still growing.