Sustainable food production is currently of global importance to meet the increasing demand for food due to a growing world population, estimated to become 9.6 billion in 2050 1 . In addition to food availability, the environmental impact of food production is also a key topic.Food production was estimated to generate a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions 2 , consume about two-thirds of world freshwater supplies 3 , and require half of the world's habitable land 4 . The food industry is a large contributor to climate change, which could even further increase as the agricultural output has to substantially increase by 2050 to meet the increasing demands for food 5 . Therefore, it is a necessity to reduce the environmental impact of food production 6 , and one of the main responses is the protein transition from animalderived to plant-derived sources 7 . The large-scale utilisation of plant-based proteins is a crucial step in reducing the environmental impact of food production, as the primary production of plant proteins has a lower CO2 and water footprint, and lower land use compared to animal protein production. At the same time, crop cultivation also generates a massive CO2 uptake, while a large negative output of livestock farming is the increased emission of greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide 8 . Changing our diets towards plant-based diets will thus yield climate benefits. However, effective implementation of plant proteins in food production can only be achieved after overcoming one of the major challenges, which is the plant protein extraction process. To better understand the challenges in designing such processes, it is necessary to evaluate the relationship between processing and composition of the plant protein extracts. Additionally, the composition-and structure-function relationships of these extract can be determined. Such an approach would allow the correlation of the plant protein extraction process to the functional properties of the final extract.
Plant crop compositionExamples of commonly used sources of plant proteins are soybean, pea and lupine. There is an emerging market for rapeseed (Brassicaceae Cruciferae) as a plant protein source, which will be studied in this thesis. Rapeseed is the second most grown oilseed in the world 9 and is primarily cultivated for its oil, as the oil content of the seeds is between 40 -50% 10,11 .The second component, content-wise, is protein, as rapeseed contains between 17 -26% protein, depending on the breed type and environmental conditions during growth 10 .Rapeseed is also rich in phenols, which are known to induce drawbacks for plant protein extraction 12,13 . Nonetheless, rapeseed possesses the potential as a source for nutritional and functional plant-based ingredients.