Site Visit and Consultative Meeting with Green Pastures Corporation
The Green Pastures Corporation (GPC), a potential technology adopter of Gummy Bear technology of CMU, conducted a site visit and consultative meeting with CMU-IPTBM at Central Mindanao University on March 21, 2022. The CMU-IPTBM team carried out the said activity to have the GPC visit where the Gummy Bear technology is being developed and discuss further details about its future production steps. This undertaking was made possible through the conducted exploratory meeting with the CMU Team and GPC last March 18, 2022.
The first part of the activity was the consultation meeting attended by the GPC Team, CMU-IPTBM Team, DOST-X, Oro Best CDO, and researchers and directors from CMU's food and natural products research facilities. The program started with the presentation of the participants starting with the owners of GPC, Mr. Rey Paraguya and his family; the project leader of the fern gummy bear candy research, Dr. Jose S. Valmorida; the Director of the Food Research Development Center (FRDC) and project staff of the fern gummy bear candy research, Dr. Queenie Ann L. Curayag; Director of Natural Products Research and Development Center (NPRDC), Dr. Melania M. Enot; Chief of Technology Business Incubator (TBI), Prof. Sheila C. Poonon; Director of Natural Science Research Center (NSRC), Dr. Florfe M. Acma; a representative from Oro Best CDO, Mr. Noemar Nash Nuñez; DOST-X represented by DOST Bukidnon Provincial Director, Ms. Ritchie Mae Guno; Chief of Technology Transfer Unit-IPTBM, Dr. Gamaliela A. Dumancas, and the Director of IPTBM, Dr. Vellorimo J. Suminguit. Dr. Suminguit then presented an overview and history of the IPTBM office and CMU’s current researches that poses commercial availability. The FRDC, NPRDC, TBI, and NSRC then showed their promotional videos, including the services they offered and technologies they developed in their research facilities. The IPTBM Team then commenced the formal meeting after the overviews and preliminaries.
The consultation meeting started with Dr. Suminguit’s thoughts about his experience as a Fairness Opinion Board (FOB) member of various technologies assisted by DOST-X. He shared with the participants that some universities can already promote their research into market-ready technologies and that CMU should rise to the challenge of commercializing technologies, specifically the more developed researches in CMU, the food technologies. Dr. Suminguit’s talk was then followed by a discussion about gummy bear candy and its ways forward. Dr. Curayag clarified that the said candy is just a supplementary food and not a food supplement, in contrast with the company’s plan to produce it as a food supplement. Moreover, Dr. Valmorida added that their product’s target customers are kids and that the gummy bears aim to replace junk foods and candies that the kids usually like. He added that their research is limited to the pharmaceutical field of study and should not be considered medicine or drugs. However, Dr. Valmorida also suggested that his team could provide the nutrition facts of the said gummy bear candy to educate the customer about the nutrition they get from purchasing it. He also added that the modifications to the gummy bear candy could be a part of the research proposal for DOST-CRADLE. Mr. Paraguya also raised his concern about modifying the fern gummy bear by adding spiriluna and moringa since his company promotes the use of the two herbs. Dr. Dela Cruz agreed with this concept, given that it will be another funded research for the CMU Team. She also added that various tests can be conducted and that these tests could improve the products’ nutrition facts. On the other hand, with regards to the commercialization of the product, Prof. Poonon suggested that the company should set their products according to the order of the technologies developed or being released in the market. For example, the company should first focus on the product development of spirulina and moringa, which the company primarily set as their prospect product. After which, the company can then focus on modifying gummy bear candy by adding spirulina and moringa, to make the product tagline look like “Gummy Bear Candy- From the makers of Spirulina and Moringa food supplements,” and the rest of the future products will follow. According to Prof. Poonon, this could boost the customers’ trust and marketability of the product
The consultative meeting ended with both teams agreeing to look into possible financial funding counterpart of GPC in the modification of fern gummy bears. The CMU team also provided their list of materials needed and other pertinent documents to the GPC. The site visit to the research facilities of CMU was then followed after the meeting and lunch of the participants.