In the CREATE project, selected functional microbial strains were developed to enhance the nutritional quality and digestibility of pulse-based foods, with a focus on Swiss yellow peas. These carefully chosen strains were employed to reduce FODMAPs - compounds that can cause digestive discomfort - and to increase the levels of essential nutrients, such as vitamin B12 and folate, thereby aligning with the dietary needs of vegetarians, vegans, and flexitarians.
The project involved a detailed analysis of Swiss yellow peas, both before and after fermentation, using varied fermentation protocols and heat treatments. This helped establish a process-structure-property relationship that connects raw, fermented, and treated materials with their nutritional and functional attributes. As a practical outcome, high-protein snacks and pasta featuring fermented Swiss yellow pea flour were successfully created using hot and cold extrusion, showcasing the innovation's versatility in food applications.
By leveraging the combined expertise of the food biotechnology, food chemistry, and food technology research groups at the ZHAW Institute for Food and Beverage Innovation and the ETH Laboratory for Food Biochemistry, the project demonstrated the potential of targeted fermentation with selected microbial strains to enhance vitamin content while reducing anti-nutritional compounds in plant-based foods. A transfer of the concept developed in the CREATE project to other R&D projects with partners, i.e., to ferment pea flour with functional microbial strains resulting in a) vitamin production (B12 and folate) and b) FODMAPs decrease is currently under discussion and evaluation. Further, the promising FODMAPs reduction strategy will be extended to other substrates in near future.

In the third year of the project, the interdisciplinary team successfully selected three strains, after numerous lab-scale fermentation trials with yellow pea flour, that, in combination, produce folate and vitamin B12 while reducing FODMAPs. The concentrations of folate and vitamin B12 produced were very promising. First application trials with the fermented flour in snack and pasta showed successful degradation of FODMAPs during fermentation and indicated that further refinement of the fermentation process is needed to optimize vitamin production. A transfer of the concept developed in the CREATE project to other applications as well as to other substrates will be evaluated and seems promising.