AgFunderNews: Planet’s most abundant protein is ready for primetime

Originally published by AgFunderNews on August 12, 2025

Author: Elaine Watson

Original article:

https://agfundernews.com/planets-most-abundant-protein-is-ready-for-primetime

Why this matters

This AgFunderNews article captures a shift we have been deliberately working toward for more than a decade: Rubisco moving from a well-understood agricultural and biochemical protein into something that is now genuinely ready to be used at commercial scale in food.

Rubisco is the most abundant protein on the planet, yet for most of modern food production it has been effectively inaccessible for human nutrition. That constraint is now gone. Leaft's advances in extraction and purification mean Rubisco can be produced with high nutritional integrity and strong functional performance. In practical terms, it can compete with, and in key applications outperform, established plant proteins on digestibility, amino acid profile, and how it performs in real food systems.

This signals a broader, necessary change in how we think about protein. Instead of growing crops to feed animals and then recovering a small fraction of that protein through meat or dairy, the opportunity is to work directly with the output of photosynthesis itself. By extracting high-quality protein straight from leafy crops, far more of the plant’s productive capacity is retained for human nutrition. That efficiency - agricultural, energetic, and nutritional - allows us to build fundamentally better protein systems with a much lighter processing footprint. This is not a marginal improvement. It is a step change in how high-quality protein can be produced.

Excerpt from the article

"Leaft Foods extracts RuBisCO from alfalfa, and is “now at what we call commercial demonstration stage where we’re producing tens of tons of material per month,” says Milne, a chemical and process engineer with a background in scaling large-scale manufacturing projects.

“In the next few months, we’ll ramp that up to hundreds of tons per month of products, including our protein concentrate, which has over 80% purity, emulsification, gelling, and foaming characteristics, and an incredible flavor profile, which is what’s essential to gain traction in the ingredient space,” adds Milne.

“We’re also selling it in a slightly different format as a branded product (Leaft Blade) that we’re marketing direct to consumers such as performance athletes in New Zealand and the US.”"

(Excerpt reproduced for commentary purposes. All rights remain with the original publisher.)

Read the complete story on AgFunderNews

https://agfundernews.com/planets-most-abundant-protein-is-ready-for-primetime

About Leaft Foods

Leaft Foods harnesses the planet's most plentiful protein, extracted directly from green leaves, to make industry-defining products with a fraction of the carbon footprint of conventional dairy protein. Leaft's allergen-free Rubisco protein matches animal proteins in digestibility and nutritional profile and allows their farmer-growers to diversify how they use their land. Founded in New Zealand by highly experienced corporate leaders John Penno and Maury Leyland, who bring deep expertise in food and farming, and led by food industry veteran Ross Milne, Leaft has evolved from a kitchen experiment into a proven sustainable protein solution for pasture-based agricultural economies worldwide. Now accelerating its expansion with a focus on the United States, the company's transformative approach has attracted diverse backers including prominent Silicon Valley firm Khosla Ventures, NBA basketball star Steven Adams, indigenous investor Ngāi Tahu and ACC. Learn more at LeaftFoods.com and LeaftBlade.com

This post contains short excerpts from an article originally published by AgFunderNews. All rights remain with the original author and publisher.