A formulator evaluating mycoprotein today can choose between at least five cleared fungal biomasses from four different genera. What they cannot do is compare the functional properties that determine whether the ingredient works in a product, because with one exception those properties have never been published.
The exception is Quorn. The gelling, foaming and emulsifying figures that circulate as “mycoprotein functionality” come from a body of work on Fusarium venenatum streams taken from the Quorn fermentation process — principally two papers from Julien Lonchamp’s group at Queen Margaret University, in 2019 and 2022, the second with two Quorn Foods co-authors. They are good papers. They are also, as far as we can find, the only stream-level functional dataset for any mycoprotein in the public literature.
What the Quorn dataset actually measured
The 2022 paper describes itself as “the first mapping of mycoprotein functionality, composition and structure throughout the Quorn fermentation process”. The samples were not the finished ingredient. They were process streams: the fermentation broth, the RNA-reduced broth, the centrate, and the centrifugation deposits and supernatants of each.
| Property | Reported value | Which stream |
|---|---|---|
| Gel elastic modulus | 5,320 Pa | RNA-reduced broth deposit gels |
| Foam stability | 380 minutes | RNA-broth and centrate supernatants, frothed |
| Emulsifying activity index | 12.80 m²/g | broth supernatant |
| Emulsion stability index | 15.84 minutes | broth supernatant |
| Oil droplet size | 18.09 µm | broth |
Two structural points follow, and they are the reason this dataset cannot be generalised.
Functionality sits in specific streams, not in “mycoprotein”. The high gelling was in the deposits; the high foaming was in the supernatants, associated with a foam-positive cerato-platanin protein; the emulsifying performance was in the broth and its supernatant. These are different materials produced by different unit operations on the same fermentation. A number attached to the species rather than the stream has already lost most of its meaning.
The RNA-reduction step is a functional variable, not only a safety one. The strongest gelling was measured on RNA-reduced broth deposits. RNA reduction exists in mycoprotein processes to control purine load; this paper shows it also changes the material’s rheology. Any process that omits or alters that step will produce a different ingredient in a way the composition table will not reveal.
Practical consequence. When a supplier cites gelling or foaming performance, ask which stream and which process step it was measured after, and at what pH, ionic strength and protein concentration. “Mycoprotein gels at 5,320 Pa” is not a specification; it is one measurement on one deposit from one fermentation.
What the newly cleared organisms have published instead
Singapore’s first published List of Approved Novel Foods sets out the specifications SFA accepted for four fungal biomasses. Every parameter is compositional, microbiological or a contaminant limit. Not one functional property appears — no viscosity, no gel strength, no solubility, no water- or oil-binding capacity.
| Organism | Cleared | Protein specification | RNA specification | Functional data published? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fusarium strain flavolapis | 6 August 2021 | >45%, water 70–80% | RNA under 2.0% | none found |
| “Fermotein”, Rhizomucor pusillus | 14 March 2024 | crude protein 44–68%, fibre 25–39% | none stated | none found |
| Neurospora crassa Bstr 26 (“Rhiza”) | 15 October 2024 | >40%, ash under 10% | none stated | none found |
| Pleurotus pulmonarius mycelium | 24 September 2025 | ≥25 g/100 g dry weight | none stated | none found |
| Fusarium venenatum (Quorn) | long-established | not in the Singapore file | RNA-reduction step named in the published process | yes — the dataset above |
The RNA column is the one to look at twice. Of the four biomasses in the Singapore file, only Fusarium flavolapis carries an RNA limit in its published specification. That does not mean the others contain more RNA — the specification is what the applicant proposed and the regulator accepted, and other jurisdictions may have imposed different conditions. It does mean a formulator cannot tell from the public record whether two mycoproteins have been through comparable nucleic-acid processing, which the Quorn work suggests is a functional as well as a nutritional question.
The protein specifications are equally hard to use. Fermotein’s is a 24-point range, 44% to 68%, while its maker describes the ingredient publicly as “about 50% complete protein, 35% healthy fibers”. Both statements are true — one is a regulatory envelope, the other a typical value — but a recipe balanced at 50% protein will behave differently against material at the top of the range, and nothing in the public record tells you where in the envelope a given lot sits.
Why this is a formulation problem rather than an academic one
The 2025 Food Bioscience review by Montebello and colleagues — 218 references, the most complete survey of the field we have found — makes the point that mycoprotein’s sensory and technological behaviour depends on the choice of fungal species, the substrate and the fermentation conditions. That is precisely the set of variables that differs between a Rhizomucor powder dried to 3–10% moisture and a wet Fusarium biomass at 70–80% water.
Three of these products are also physically different formats before any biology is considered. Fermotein is a pasteurised, dried, milled powder. Fusarium flavolapis is specified at 70–80% water. The Pleurotus entry describes harvesting by centrifugation, filtration or sieving, followed by washing. Substituting one for another is not an ingredient swap; it is a reformulation with a different water balance, a different particle structure and, on the evidence of the Quorn work, a different functional profile that nobody has measured in public.
Practical consequence. Treat every mycoprotein as a distinct ingredient requiring its own functional characterisation — gel strength, water-holding, emulsion stability at your process conditions — even where two products carry similar protein numbers. Budget for the trials. Published data will not substitute, and the composition specification will not predict the outcome.
The counter-argument
Two objections carry weight.
First, functional data is commercially valuable and companies keep it. It is very likely that The Protein Brewery, The Better Meat Co and Nature’s Fynd hold internal rheology, emulsification and water-binding datasets far more detailed than anything in the literature, and that customers see them under non-disclosure. The absence of published data is not evidence of absent data — it is evidence of an information asymmetry that favours the supplier during specification.
Second, formulators rarely work from literature values anyway. Ingredient selection in food manufacturing is empirical: samples arrive, benchtop trials run, the ingredient either works in the matrix or does not. On that view the literature gap is irrelevant to practice.
Both are fair, and neither disposes of the issue. Empirical selection works when a formulator can get samples of every candidate; it works badly for early-stage screening, for cost modelling before samples exist, and for anyone — an investor, an acquirer, a co-manufacturer — who has to judge from the outside whether two ingredients are substitutes. The Quorn numbers get used in that gap precisely because they are the only numbers there.
What we could not establish
- Whether functional datasets exist for the newer organisms and are simply unpublished. We searched the indexed literature for gelling, foaming and emulsifying studies on Rhizomucor pusillus, Neurospora crassa and Pleurotus pulmonarius as food biomasses and found none comparable to the Quorn work. Absence from our search is not proof of absence; if such a dataset exists, we would like to see it and will update this piece.
- Whether the newly cleared products undergo RNA reduction. Their Singapore specifications are silent, and the process descriptions do not mention such a step.
- Where in its 44–68% envelope a typical Fermotein lot sits, beyond the company’s public “about 50%”.
- Whether other jurisdictions imposed conditions Singapore did not. The EU authorisation for Fermotein and the US self-affirmed and notified GRAS routes each generate their own documents, and we did not examine those files for this piece.
- How the Quorn figures vary between production runs. The 2022 paper maps one process; it does not establish the batch-to-batch spread, which is what a specification would need.
What to watch
- The first published functional characterisation of a non-Fusarium food mycoprotein. It would immediately become the second data point in a field that currently has one, and would show whether the Quorn values are typical or exceptional.
- Whether specifications start carrying functional parameters. A regulator will not require gel strength — it is not a safety attribute — but a purchase specification can, and the first supplier to publish one gains a real commercial argument.
- RNA limits appearing in newer clearances. If a jurisdiction imposes one on Rhizomucor or Neurospora biomass, that is both a safety signal and, per the Quorn work, a change in the material formulators will receive.
- Whether the 5,320 Pa figure travels without its stream label. It is the most quotable number in the mycoprotein literature, and it describes a centrifugation deposit from an RNA-reduced broth — not an ingredient anyone can buy. We have watched exactly this kind of figure detach from its basis before.