GENEVA, Ill.Roquette America is holding its 1st Annual Imagination Creation Food Competition designed for food science or culinary art program students to collaborate in a team setting by developing an innovative food product in either the culinary, baking or snack foods categories.

The Imagination Creation Food Competition will challenge participating teams to concept and prototype a food product in one of the aforementioned three categories. The prototype must utilize one Roquette product ingredient, which will be supplied by Roquette. Registration is open from Jan. 31 to Feb. 28, 2014. Competition submissions are due by March 21, 2014, and must include a formal written proposal and edible prototype. Each submission will be judged by leading industry experts at Roquette America.

Three team finalists will be chosen for a trip to Roquette America in Geneva, Ill., to compete in a live finale April 10-11, 2014. The finals will be hosted at Roquette Americas Customer Innovation Center and Culinary Demonstration Kitchen where the three teams will be able to utilize Roquette Americas professional, state-of-the-art kitchen suite to prepare their prototypes.

The three teams will then present their final prototypes to a panel of guest chefs and Roquette experts to crown a winner.

The winning teams prototype will be featured at the Roquette America booth within the IFT Annual Meeting and Food Expo in New Orleans, June 21-24, 2014. The winner and runner-up will both receive monetary prizes.

Todays students are tomorrows innovators", said Gina Steffensmeier, director of marketing, Roquette America.  We are truly excited to bring students from various universities to our state-of-the-art innovation center to give them a head start in working with the next generation of healthy food ingredients."