White Lupin as a New Crop for Plant Proteins

The world is demanding more protein for human consumption-increasing amounts of plant proteins are being used to meet this increasing demand. It has been estimated that global plant-based alternative protein market could swell to $162 billion in the next decade from $29.4 billion in 2020 and every tenth portion of meat, eggs, and dairy eaten around the globe by 2035 could be derived from plant proteins. White lupin (Lupinus albus L.), a legume, has been researched in Virginia for several years which has resulted in development of several winter-hardy and high yielding lines. However, concentrations of protein and relative concentrations of various amino acids in seeds of these lines are not known. Therefore, objective of this study was to characterize protein in winter-hardy lupin lines. Seeds of five winter-hardy white lupin lines grown during 2020-2021 contained about 51% protein as compared to literature values of about 35 and 24% protein in soybean and winter pea seeds, respectively. Concentrations of nine essential amino acids (isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, threonine, tryptophan, valine, phenylalanine, and histidine) in lupin seed varied from 1.25 to 1.41, 1.98 to 2.51, 1.12 to 1.60, 0.21 to 0.27, 1.03 to 1.28, 0.25 to 0.30, 1.22 to 1.40, 1.14 to 1.28, and 0.69 to 0.79, respectively. These concentrations compared quite well with those in soybean and winter pea seed. These results indicate that white lupin has considerable potential to meet alternative plant protein needs of manufactures and consumers.