Fayetteville, AR – Nutraceutical Innovations, LLC has received a $350,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research award from the United States Department of Agriculture to support further development of the company’s proprietary rice bran formula for growing yeast. Early product development results have demonstrated that rice bran is capable of growing three times the amount of yeast when compared to traditional methods that typically uses molasses and sugar cane as a growth medium. The benefits of this discovery will have a positive impact on a number of industries including the yeast industry, the food industry and the rice industry.

The yeast industry will realize the benefit of producing yeast from cheaper source of rice bran. Potential cost savings for production of Brewer’s yeast and Baker’s yeast should be substantial given that the price of a ton of rice bran is roughly one-half the price of a ton of molasses. Additionally, since demand for molasses and sugar cane exceeds domestic production, the U.S. must import these products in order to meet demand. The use of rice bran to produce yeast will therefore have a threefold benefit: increased volume of yeast production, decreased production costs and decreased dependence on foreign products.

The rice milling industry will benefit as well. In the processes of milling white rice, the outer bran layer is removed. This bran layer has a wide variety of beneficial compounds that are not made available to our bodies through normal digestion, so rice producers are forced to sell this highly nutritious product as a low-cost filler in animal feed. The same fermentation process used by Nutraceutical Innovations to grow yeast also releases the macro and micronutrients from rice bran so that they can be used to develop vegetable-based proteins and natural preservatives and supplements, many of which have health benefits that range from antioxidant to anticancer to antihypertensive activity.

This project has garnered significant attention from both the rice industry and the yeast industry. Dr. Navam Hettiarachchy of Nutraceutical Innovations says, “We are excited about this project and are confident that optimization of the yeast production process and characterization of the new products derived from rice bran have the potential to enhance the use of our processes and co-products as an easy and convenient choice for these industries.” This valuable production process has been exclusively licensed to Nutraceutical Innovations from the University of Arkansas.

Contact: Calvin Goforth 479/571-2592