Food and beverage manufacturers could soon have two more options in the race to replace sugar with healthier, clean-label and sustainable alternatives that they can source reliably and affordably thanks to North Carolina-based food-tech company Elo Life Systems, which recently launched field trials for the first-ever mogroside-producing watermelons.
The company says the resulting natural high-intensity sweetener “outperforms stevia and monk fruit,” and will be available as a juice and powder as early as 2026.
The sweet molecule produced in Elo’s watermelons – mogroside V – is a triterpenoid glycoside that is 200-300 times sweeter than sucrose and found naturally in monk fruit in small amounts, which makes it highly desirable but also difficult to source and expensive.
By producing the sweetener in watermelons through a combination of data analytics, bio-molecular farming and plant genetics, Elo will be able to offer higher quantities of the sweetener molecules more sustainably, locally and at a lower price point.
And in doing so, the company is offering food and beverage companies under pressure to reduce sugar another tool for their reformulation toolbox.
“Food companies and beverage companies, are all looking to reduce sugar in our diets. People understand that there is all sorts of problems, chronic diseases, trillions of dollars of cost that society is bearing right now because of excess sugar in our diets. And so we need more solutions,” Todd Rands, CEO and president at Elo Life Systems, said at Future Food-Tech in Chicago.
Elo relies on nature for cost-effective production at scale
Elo is addressing this need by finding in diverse species the best molecules that “nature is already making” – sometimes in small amounts – and “decoding” the production processes to recreate the pathways in different crops that are more sustainable, easier to produce, affordable and local, Rands explained.
“Elo is starting with a sweetener that comes from monk fruit, which is this really exotic plant that grows in these remote valleys of China, and nobody can get enough of it, and it’s extremely expensive. We’re able to put that into” watermelons to create a “super sweet juice” that can be blended into beverages to reduce sugar and calories but, because it is 200 sweeter than sugar, preserving the taste that consumers expect, he said.
The company’s strategic selection of watermelon as its mogroside-host means Elo can use existing agricultural and manufacturing infrastructure to keep costs down and quickly scale production.
To test that theory and work out the kinks for scaling, the company recently launched the first field trials for growing its mogroside-producing watermelons, which Rands says “unlocks” the next steps in scaling and product innovation.
“We can now start growing more and more acres, and we have more and more samples and the product is available for customers. It just opens everything so that the artists … the food scientists, can start to formulate and play with it and see how it performs,” he added.
Rands explained the company will need about two growing seasons to scale and finetune production, but its juice and powder, made from other plants, should be available in 2026.
Elo builds GRAS dossier for its sweetener
As Elo scales production, it simultaneously is pursuing GRAS status for it sweetener.
Rands explained the company will use product from its fields to self-determine the ingredient is Generally Recognized As Safe and subsequently notify FDA.
“We will have GRAS status early next year – and that is a big step that unlocks the opportunity for customers” to begin “tinkering and playing and formulating,” he added.
Wanted: partners and investors
Partnerships are critical to Elo long-term success and the company is actively seeking collaborators and investors, Rands said.
He explained Elo is finalizing its “first major partnerships with a sweetener company” that could help with formulation, prototypes and customer relationships.
In addition, it is raising its next capital round, which Rands said he hopes will include strategic investors who can help validate the ingredient’s importance in sugar-reduction.
He added, Elo already has “fantastic investors,” including from venture firms, who “are ready to keep going with us through this project.”
While the company has many pokers in the fire, Rands said he is eager to work with earlier adopters who want to work with Elo’s sweetener now, rather than wait for a finished product off the shelf.
“There are opportunities right now to collaborate and partner with Elo so that you can get an early look at how this product changes everything for your sugar reduction strategy,” he said, adding, “We are so excited just to see it in all the different forms and prototypes and formulations that they can build.”
