Ugly vegetables recreating meat and dairy-like flavours

In New Zealand, 45% of the fresh fruits and veggies are rejected as imperfect and will never leave the farm they are grown on. Instead, they get composted or, even worse, sent to landfill.

PhD candidate Sarathadevi Rajendran

Despite their appearances, these vegetables are otherwise still nutritiously sound, which is why Sarathadevi Rajendran has decided to work with them. Rajendran, a University of Otago PhD candidate, is creating meat and dairy-like flavour compounds from fermented, imperfect or ‘ugly’ vegetables. She is using the beneficial bacteria, lactic acid bacteria, to ferment the ‘ugly’ vegetables to get the desired flavour compounds.

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