More than just peanuts

To improve the reputation of these extremely valuable foods, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses². This is to be seen as a kind of image campaign for peas, lentils & Co. Pulses, and legumes in general, have manifold benefits and are “doubly talented”.  Their high protein content makes them a valuable, healthy aliment hat can replace meat and prevent diseases like diabetes, adiposity, and heart diseases. At the same time, legumes can enrich the soil with nutrients, in particular nitrogen. Thus, legumes are at the same time aliments and fertilizers.  Besides, growing legumes provides many more people with a valuable food resource than the production of meat does. These findings are not new. Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) already stated that the same area of pastureland that could indirectly feed ten people with the meat of the animals grazing on it could feed and maintain one hundred people if millet, peas, lentils, and barley were grown on it. (“Dieselbe Strecke Landes, welche als Wiese, das heißt als Viehfutter, zehn Menschen durch das Fleisch der darauf gemästeten Tier aus zweiter Hand ernährt, vermag, mit Hirse, Erbsen, Linsen und Gerste bebaut, hundert Menschen zu erhalten und zu ernähren.“ )^3.

As 2016 is drawing to a close, we ask: Has this image campaign of the UN been successful? Have researchers and industry recognized the benefits of legumes and increased their activities in this area? How do companies in the food and seeds producing industry respond to this campaign? A search in scientific publications helps answer these questions. We conducted our searches in the CAplus^SM database on the new STN platform for the time period from 2000 to the present. The results were limited to patent documents. Patents are a good, reliable indicator for marketing activities. Whenever new markets emerge or establish themselves, companies are trying to protect their products through patent applications.  This way they protect their company know-how and innovations against being used by others, secure their exclusive rights of exploitation, and thus improve their chances to sell their innovative products or processes on the global markets.

Almost 59% of the patents from the Food and Feed Chemistry section were first filed in China, followed by Japan (11%) and Korea (10%). This means that Asian patents, representing almost 80% of all first applications, clearly dominate this area of research. The strikingly many fodder recipes indicate that there is a growing market for meat in Asia, in particular in China. Obviously, Chinese patent applicants assume that there is large market potential in the field of meat supply and production.

TOP 10 patent applicants in the category “agriculture”

The companies listed above are agro-chemical corporations, with three US companies leading the field. At present, there are many press reports about acquisitions and mergers of these companies. After long negotiations, the German Bayer group bought Monsanto in September 2016 for 59 billion dollar.  In January 2016, DuPont and Dow merged into a giant new US corporation, and Chemchina group, owned by the Chinese state, would like to buy the Swiss company Syngenta. There is a lot of fluctuation in this industry sector in the Year of Legumes. Apparently, the companies expect increasing revenues and hope that mergers will facilitate their access to the markets and strengthen their market power. They complement their product portfolios and benefit from the transfer of know-how. Their final objective is to sustain their market position.

An interesting point is that MS Technologies and Stine Seed Company have specialized on soy seeds.  Due to their large number of patent publications, these companies can be counted among the most innovative companies in their industry sector. They can afford intense research on just one kind of seed, and this seems to pay off well. While neither Stine Seed Company nor MS Technologies are listed on the stock exchange, they still can successfully compete with large listed corporations.

The genome sequence of the soy plant has been known since 2010⁵.  Since then, it has been possible to increase the plant’s content in oil and protein by genetically modifying its seeds, depending on its intended future use. Genetic modifications can also produce pest- and herbicide-resistant soy plants.

Beans – we did not distinguish between the different cultivars (red, white, black, etc.) – come second in our patent analysis. Peas and lentils native in Europe only play a minor part in research, see diagram below.

1. Old Testament, First Book of Moses 25:34.
2. www.fao.org/pulses-2016/en/ (last checked on September 2, 2016).
3. Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (September 14, 1769 –May 6, 1859), German naturalist.
4. Search carried out in STN databases on August 18, 2016.
5. Jeremy Schmutz et al., Genome sequence of the palaeopolyploid soybean, Nature 463, 178-183 (14 January 2010), doi: dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature08670.