Project SOY Plus - A Virtual Experience

Posted on Monday, October 19th, 2020

Written by Loretta Higgins

In 1996, Project SOY was founded at the University of Guelph for youth to create revolutionary products from soybeans. In 2019, the organization announced it would be transitioning from Project SOY to Project SOY Plus – to now include products derived from any type of plant. Now, in 2020, another change to Project SOY Plus is that the competition will be entirely virtual to align with Public Health recommendations and ensure safety of the students. However, being a virtual competition will not take away from the fun or the experience! In fact, this will allow the competition to be more interactive than ever with the option of meeting with coordinators and fellow competitors over the multiple video conference or social media platforms at students’ disposal.

So, for 25 years, Project SOY Plus has been giving University of Guelph students the opportunity to create, develop, and market plant-based products. Through this time, many past entries have gone on to enter the marketplace and become sustainable companies, such as Neophyto Foods of Guelph. Neophyto was a Graduate entry in the 2017/2018 Project SOY Competition and was developed as a vegan cheese for the competition. It is now going on to be incorporated into a Craft-It-Yourself Kit. This kit is a plant-based meat kit that consumers can prepare at home; especially useful in the Covid-19 world, as many restaurants face restrictions through local health recommendations.

Through the 25 years of Project SOY Plus, there has been endless creativity in products ranging from cosmetics to foods to even biodegradable plastic mulches, and yet, there is still even so much creativity to come!