Area Food Science R & D
Glanbia Foods, Inc.: In addition to cheese processing, Glanbia has one additional plant solely dedicated to whey processing, producing 18 million pounds of dairy ingredient annually – one of the largest in the U.S. The whey processing plants in Richfield and Gooding are two of the most technically advanced facilities in the U.S.,
addressing a burgeoning global marketplace in nutritionals.
Glanbia Nutritionals Ingredient Technology (GNIT) focuses on core research and innovative solutions development for whey proteins and milk minerals.
Glanbia’s Collaboration Center takes whey products and applies them in a variety of food products and processes. In spring 2013, Glanbia invested over $15 million to build an office complex and Cheese Innovation Center to support Glanbia’s growing export and new product innovation efforts. The CIC provides additional resources to further collaborate with nation/international customers, suppliers and universities in develop new cheese making process and products. Also on site is a bakery for Glanbia scientists to study how to incorporate superfood ancient seeds a nd grains into various products.
Glanbia Nutritionals is a leading international supplier of nutritional and functional dairy-based ingredients to the functional foods, performance/health enhancing beverages and supplements markets for adult nutrition and health, infant/medical use, topical and oral health and animal nutrition/health.
Idaho Milk Products Technical Center focuses on new product development, product research, evaluation of new technologies, and sales and brand development.
Clear Springs Foods: Clear Springs Center for Global Aquaculture Research and Quality Assurance is the world’s premier R&D center for freshwater Rainbow Trout. The center is primarily focused on optimizing fish production through fish nutrition, fish health management, fish reproduction, brood stock management and environmental science. All work is done to insure consistent, premier quality trout are produced in an economically and environmentally responsible manner.
Healthy fish is vital to optimizing Rainbow Trout production. Clear Springs has developed various strategies from brood stock, to egg and on to harvestable sized fish. As new tools or techniques are developed they are first tested in controlled environments prior to farm implementation. The center operates its own feed mill and develops new feed formulations that help in Clear Springs’ efforts to ensure environmentalsustainability.Ongoing research projects include nutrition, waste management and fish culture.
More than 80 million Rainbow Trout eggs are produced here annually and intensely monitored throughout their life stages to ensure their well-being. Sophisticated and sensitive instrumentation is routinely used to test water quality, feed nutritional content and product quality. Advanced detection methods are employed to look for
potential fish pathogens in fish and water.
Betaseed: Betaseed is North America’s leading research and breeding organization devoted entirely to developing and marketing high yielding, multiple disease tolerant
sugar beet seed varieties. Southern Idaho’s city of Kimberly is home to one of just three North America locations conducting research for the development of diseaseresistant sugar beet seed.
Betaseed’s research program in Kimberly has focused on creating curly top tolerant sugar beet hybrids since 1973. Curly top is a plant condition developed from a virus infection unique to western U.S. sugar beet production. Betaseed was the first sugar beet seed company to establish a research site dedicated to addressing curly top.
Betaseed researchers in southern Idaho operate performance trials to evaluate developingsugarbeethybridsinWashington,Oregon,CaliforniaandIdaho.Over 20 scientists and technicians in Kimberly conduct plant breeding, pest and disease tolerance evaluations, and replicated yield trials on over 170 acres of irrigated farm land. Betaseed is the leading sugar beet seed brand for growers in North America. This facility is one of a few in the world conducting sugar beet curly top research, vital to long-term successful and healthy sugar beet production.
Amalgamated Research, Inc.: Amalgamated Sugar in southern Idaho is one of the nation’s top sugar producers and parent company of Amalgamated Research also located here. Amalgamated Research is a worldwide marketer of ultra-efficient technologies for over 200 years. The goal of its collaborated research is to manage a project completely from lab scale evaluation to industrial implementation. This includes specializing in creation and management of innovative technology from lab and pilot to full-scale industrial implementation while providing bench/pilot scale process research, scale-up design and implementation, analytical services and contract research.
Amalgamated Research offers wet chemistry, instrument and microbiology labs as well as two large pilot areas used to develop new processes and execute pilot projects for customers. A variety of equipment is available here and in-house automation capability provides precise and individualized control of tested processes.
Rangen: Rangen’s Aquaculture Division is an international leader in the production of feeds and feed additives for the aquaculture industry for over 60 years. Rangen operates three divisions in southern Idaho including aquaculture, general feed and commodities. Rangen’s primary business is the production and marketing of specialized high quality aquaculture feeds including trout, salmon, shrimp feed and premixes.
Monsanto Wheat Technology Center: Monsanto’s Wheat Technology Center in the Twin Falls is dedicated to supporting the development of best-inclass wheat varieties to help farmers increase their productivity. The facility serves as Monsanto’s core wheat breeding research and development facility with about 24 research positions housed there. The Twin Falls research facility is welcomed by the wheat industry outside of Idaho because it signals a major commitment by Monsanto to research and develop improved wheat varieties.
R & D Support: Research and Development in southern Idaho will continue to impact the U.S. and the world thanks to the support of two world class entities. Idaho National Lab (INL) is one of the Department of Energy’s 10 multi-program national laboratories performing work in energy, national security, science and environment. While INL is the nation’s leading center for nuclear energy research and development, the lab serves as a critical source of support for local and state R&D efforts.
Further support is offered by Idaho’s only land-grant research university, the University of Idaho (U of I). U of I, with more than 70 locations across the state, is dedicated to addressing the needs of the state, the region and the world through k nowledge discovery, excellence in teaching and service.
Sustainability:
The College of Southern Idaho (CSI) has an integrated workforce development program that offers programs flexible to industry’s needs and customized training to assure the local workforce is qualified to meet the challenges brought on by a rapidly changing and growing economy. CSI’s Food Quality Management degree program equips students for highly skilled food processing jobs.
Conclusion:
The diversity of Southern Idaho’s agricultural base provides an abundant resource of raw materials for many food processors. The region has long been committed to sustainability of its natural resources, vital to maintaining quality land, water and air. Thus ongoing environmental stewardship ensures that current and future agribusiness goods and services are produced economically and responsibly. In addition, A fully developed infrastructure is in place to process, package, store and transport products to market locally, nationally and internationally. In summary, work force availability, raw materials and business incentives make southern Idaho one of the best place in the United States to locate a food manufacturing or related service.