FARGO, ND. — The Peltier Complex, a new 160,0000-square-foot facility on the North Dakota State University campus, will become a place to conduct research, train students and advance the agriculture and food industries. The Peltier Complex will house NDSU’s food science, meat science and cereal laboratories as well as the Northern Crops Institute, an agency that promotes, develops and markets crops grown in North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota and Montana. US Department of Agriculture offices are in the facility, too.

The North Dakota state legislature in 2021 approved $70 million for a new combined facility and authorized an additional $15 million in fund-raising to expand and enhance research and teaching capacity at NDSU. A grand opening was held June 12 of this year.

“We hope to be fully operational by the end of July,” said David Boehm, interim co-director and technical manager for the NCI.

Sections of the facility may be used jointly by the NCI, the USDA and NDSU, Boehm said. In one example, a section of the building is dedicated to hard red spring wheat.

“It makes it easier to have questions about equipment or processing (among) scientists that are working on the same projects,” Boehm said.

Other sections are dedicated to durum wheat and barley. A soy food lab will focus on applications such as soy milk and tofu while an extrusion lab will be for applications like puffed cereal, snacks and textured vegetable protein. All NCI labs will be inspected by the US Food and Drug Administration. In the pasta lab, a pilot-scale pasta press machine will create 52 short and long pasta shapes, bison, NDSU’s mascot. The Peltier Complex also includes a meat processing lab, various bake and rheology labs, and a stone mill lab.

A sensory kitchen will be used for NCI research and for university courses, said Casey Peterson, PhD, interim co-director and program development manager for the NCI. Companies in the private industry have made requests to use the sensory kitchen, too.

“So it will be in demand,” he said.

Events such as NDSU soy procurement and grain procurement courses will take place in an auditorium that seats 60 as will the NCI’s annual Ancient Grains Conference, Peterson said.

The complex is named after the late Joseph C. Peltier, a 1951 graduate of the university who majored in education and math. The Peltier family was given naming rights after a donation.

Peltier was with Arthur Farmers Elevator/Arthur Companies from 1955 through 2007, holding various positions, including serving as general manager and vice president and as a board member. Teams from countries such as Japan, Thailand and Indonesia hosted by the NCI visited the company’s grain elevators, said Keith Peltier, Joseph Peltier’s son. Joseph Peltier was a member of the North Dakota House of Representatives from 1979-85.

“He was a great visionary and a great servant of agriculture,” said Keith Peltier, who received a master’s degree in agricultural economics at NDSU in 1977.

Keith Peltier is president and general manager at Proseed Inc., Fargo, and on the board of directors for The Arthur Companies. His brother, Jeff Peltier, also a board member of the Arthur Companies, graduated from NDSU as did his sisters Suzette Peltier and Betty Jo Wilson.

“We’ re proud to be part of the heritage,” Keith Peltier said. “We’re proud to be part of the process for the Peltier Complex. It’s really going to be a great deal for agriculture in North Dakota and the world, and it’s going to be great deal for NDSU.”