"Both the quality and relevance are of top quality this year", says Lars Hinrichsen, who is chairman of the Danish Programme Commission on Health, Food and Welfare.
He divides the grants into three groups, with health as the great unifying goal: The majority of the grants deal with the supply of food to the growing world population. One grant is about overweight, and several grants deal with converting waste to money. All granted projects have a strong international involvement and almost all the projects also have very strong collaborations with companies at home and abroad: “One of our greatest challenges is to produce adequate amounts of food in a sustainable manner, and the effect of the year's grants can quickly become very concrete in the Danish food value chain”, he says.
The biggest grant DKK 20 million goes to Professor MSO Jacob Holm Nielsen from University of Copenhagen, who will lead the project called HAPFAM. The project will develop healthy and inexpensive protein-rich food for the African market and also promote growth in the food sector by developing new, healthy, Danish-made, competitive and sustainable foods.
HAPFAM - Healthy and affordable protein rich foods for African markets
Danish title: HAPFAM - Sunde, protein-rige fødevarer med forbrugervenlige priser til det afrikanske marked
Grant holder: Jacob Holm Nielsen
Grant: DKK 20 million
Total budget: DKK 25.5 million
Funding period: 1/1-2014 - 31/12-2018
StrucSat - How structure affects satiety
Danish title: StrucSat - Hvordan fødevarers struktur påvirker mæthed
Grant holder: Richard Ipsen
Grant: DKK 17.4 million
Total budget: DKK 23.8 million
Funding period: 1/1-2014 - 31/12-2018
OliGram. Design and gram scale enzymatic synthesis of human milk oligosaccharides
Danish title: OliGram. Design og enzymatisk syntese af humane mælke-oligosakkarider i gram-skala
Grant holder: Peter Stougaard
Grant: DKK 11.8 million
Total budget: DKK 15.5 million
Funding period: 1/1-2014 - 31/12-2017
LIFE-DNP: hyperpolarized magnetic resonance for in vivo quantification of lipid, sugar and amino acid metabolism in lifestyle related diseases
Danish title: Fødevarer og sundhed - studier baseret på hyperpolariserings-MR
Grant holder: Hans Stødkilde-Jørgensen
Grant: DKK 17.4 million
Total budget: DKK 33.9 million
Funding period: 1/4-2014 - 30/3-2018
A plant-produced immunoenhanced pig vaccine against PRRS
Danish title: En plante-produceret vaccine mod grise PRRS
Grant holder: Finn Skou Pedersen
Grant: DKK 15.2 million
Total budget: DKK 19.5 million
Funding period: 1/1-2014 - 31/12-2018
Microbial biofertilizers for enhanced crop availability of phosphorus pools in soil and waste - novel strategies for sustainable bio-based food production
Danish title: Mikroorganismer til forøget planteudnyttelse af fosfor fra jord og affald
Grant holder: Ole Nybroe
Grant: DKK 19.3 million
Total budget: DKK 25,1 million
Funding period: 1/1-2014 - 31/12-2017
BRCC- Restricting the pathogenic effect on barley of the endophytic fungus Ramularia collo-cygni
Danish title: BRCC-Effektiv resistens mod sygdommen Ramularia bladplet i byg forårsaget af den endofytiske svamp Ramularia collo-cygni
Grant holder: Elena Simona Radutoiu
Grant: DKK 15.2 million
Total budget: DKK 19.8 million
Funding period: 1/1-2014 - 31/12-2018
Keratin2Protein: Novel approach to protein recovery from unutilized slaughterhouse waste through microbial conversion
Danish title: En ny tilgang til udvindelse af højværdi-proteinprodukter fra biprodukter gennem mikrobiologisk konvertering
Grant holder: Søren Johannes Sørensen
Grant: DKK 13.3 million
Total budget: DKK 21.1 million
Funding period: 1/1-2014 - 31/12-2017
Reuse of water in the food and bioprocessing industries (REWARD)
Danish title: Genbrug af vand i fødevare- og bioprocesserings-industrien
Grant holder: Søren Balling Engelsen
Grant: DKK 17.8 million
Total budget: DKK 26.2 million
Funding period: 1/1-2014 - 31/03-2018