Led by Jiang Haokui, researchers with a soya bean pilot base in Yingkou in Northeast China's Liaoning Province have successfully devised a processing line to distill soya bean reactive ingredients, including high-quality saponin, isoflavone, nucleic acid, oligosaccharide and concentrated protein. Such ingredients also have a high value for medical and industrial usage.

Soya beans have mainly been used to produce oil and distill protein through traditional processing methods, said Jiang. Downstream processing technologies refer to methods to extract all the active ingredients from soya beans. "Downstream" refers to a process that is closer to the point of sale than to the point of production.

The National Food and Nutrition Consulting Committee granted the new process a national certificate at the end of last year, Jiang told China Daily during a telephone interview.

During the past two months, representatives of more than 40 companies have visited the pilot base to seek cooperation and to promote the new technology, said Jiang. The companies came from Northeast China's Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces as well as Liaoning, in addition to Jiangsu, Shandong and Shanghai in East China, Shanxi Province in North China and Sichuan Province in Southwest China.

Jiang said he believed that the new technology will help boost soya bean processing enterprises.

Due to low or non-existent profits, 80 percent of soya bean processing enterprises have stopped production in full or in part, he added.

Jiang's pilot base belongs to the State Research and Promotion Center for Soya Bean Downstream Processing Technologies, whose headquarters is in Changchun, capital of Northeast China's Jilin Province.

Soya beans and soya bean products are regarded as traditional nutritional foods in China.

(China Daily February 25, 2002)