"Potato Rice" and "Whole Bean Tofu" from the Food Science and Processing Research Center of Shenzhen University were featured in the White Paper of the Chemical Science and Society Summit Forum.

The Chemical Sciences and Society Summit (CS3) is a series of biennial conferences jointly initiated by chemical societies and funding agencies from five countries: China, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan. It invites senior scientists from relevant fields worldwide to discuss and identify the most pressing global issues and challenges in health, food, energy, and the environment, and to propose feasible solutions. The results of these discussions are published as a white paper in the name of the chemical societies and funding agencies of the five countries, aiming to gain the widest possible public attention, enhance the influence of chemistry, and provide guidance for funding directions. 

The ninth CS3 offline conference was held in September 2023 at the headquarters of the Chemical Society of Japan in Tokyo, Japan, with the theme "The Role of Chemistry in Sustainable Food Development: Challenges and Prospects." The summit focused on global food issues, establishing and proposing the mission of the chemical community, including chemical societies and funding agencies, in addressing sustainable food issues. It comprised of three themes: chemistry in revolutionary food engineering, chemistry supporting sustainable food production, and circular and sustainable chemistry for food sustainability. Academician Wu Chi, Director of the Food Science and Processing Research Center at Shenzhen University, was invited to attend the conference as the head of the Chinese delegation. Two original achievements developed by the center's team - "Potato Rice" and "Whole Bean Tofu"—were highlighted as key cases of the Chinese delegation and featured in a separate chapter of the white paper. (The white paper was released globally in December 2024; interested readers can read it online or download it from https://www.chemsoc.org.cn/a6273.html.)

The white paper points out that the "Potato Rice" technology uses potatoes as a raw material (annual output of nearly 100 million tons in our country). Through energy-saving and water-saving processes, it transforms potatoes into a granular staple food with an appearance and taste similar to rice. This solves the storage problems of potatoes due to sprouting and provides a "Chinese solution" for global staple food substitution. Experts at the conference praised it as "providing a replicable chemical engineering template for food security in arid and cold regions." Another achievement, "Whole Bean Tofu," revolutionizes the traditional water-intensive and high-emission production model of soy products. It fully utilizes the previously discarded yellow whey and soybean residue, doubling the yield of tofu and related soy products such as dried tofu and fried tofu (based on an equal amount of dried beans). This results in a product rich in dietary fiber, with a 30% increase in protein content, while retaining the traditional tofu flavor. The white paper emphasizes that this technology "achieves the dual goals of carbon reduction and nutritional enhancement in the food manufacturing process through chemical means." Academician Wu stated, "Both achievements are based on the first principle that 'chemistry is the core science for understanding the composition, properties, and changes of food.' Through precise molecular-level design, it achieves high-value and sustainable production of bulk agricultural products. In the future, the Shenzhen University Food Science and Processing Research Center will continue to serve the national food security strategy through chemical innovation."