You’ve heard of yellow corn and white corn—but what about ‘Orange Corn’? Thanks to a father-son duo who started their own company based in Indiana called Nutramaize, you’ll likely be hearing a lot more about it in the years to come.
“We want to be the leader in nutritionally-enhanced corn,” says Evan Rocheford, who co-founded Nutramaize with his father, Dr. Torbert Rocheford, the Dr. Fred L. Patterson Endowed Chair in Translational Genomics for Crop Improvement and a professor of agronomy with Purdue University’s College of Agriculture.
Hoosier Ag Today spoke with Evan Rocheford during the QUADRANT event hosted by AgriNovus Indiana at VisionLoft Stutz in Indianapolis on July 17. Nutramaize was one of the ag startup companies featured during the event.
Evan says his father came up with the idea for orange corn more than 20 years ago in order to bring Vitamin A and other nutrients to those who have vitamin deficiencies in many areas of the world, such as Africa.
“A lot of people did not think that they would be able to develop varieties that had high enough vitamin A levels to actually make a difference in Africa,” said Evan. “Most people said, ‘You’re never going to be able to do it with natural variation.’ [My father] proved them wrong. He found the variation after he and his collaborators identified key genes that are present in corn through natural variation. They were able to use those to breed varieties that have much higher levels of vitamin A, so it’s been a tremendously successful scientific innovation.”
Evan says another goal is to bring orange corn to the masses through the “Professor Torbert” brand of Nutramaize’s retail products.
“We have grits, corn meal, corn flour—all of those are available at Amazon.com or on our website, which is ProfessorTorberts.com,” he says. “People describe [our products] as being creamy and having a rich flavor.”
Evan adds that Nutramaize has also been working to provide their orange corn as poultry feed for egg producers. The corn not only provides more nutrients for both the animal and the egg—but it also gives the egg yolks a darker color and a richer flavor.
“We’re able to increase the nutritional density of the eggs and improve the health of the birds,” says Evan. “The research has proven these benefits through our collaborations with Purdue University.”
The Rochefords have received a significant amount of funding to expand their research. Last year, Nutramaize received a two-year, $650,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from USDA to demonstrate the health and pigmentation benefits of feeding orange corn to poultry on a commercial scale.
Earlier this year, Nutramaize received a three-year, $460,455 grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to study how the antioxidant carotenoids abundant in its orange corn can mitigate the negative health effects and production losses associated with heat stress in laying hens.
NutraMaize licenses its orange corn through the Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization.
Click HERE to learn more about ‘Professor Torbert’s Orange Corn’ products.
Click HERE for Nutramaize.com.
