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The food we eat accounts for a third of man's climate impact. Climate change and a growing population mean that sustainable protein sources are becoming important.
Associate professor Shaojun Xiong and his colleagues at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Umeå have developed a resource-efficient way to cultivate protein-rich edible mushrooms such as shiitake and oyster mushrooms. These fungi are grown on wood. Traditionally the cultivation has been rather energy intensive — for example the wood needs to be sterilised at 120 degrees Celsius — but the team has made the method both more efficient and sustainable by lowering the temperature required. In addition they use Swedish forest residues as substrate. That reduces energy consumption and the cost of equipment, and it opens the chance of a better return on cultivating these mushrooms.
"Today we import a lot of mushrooms like this in Sweden, but we see a great potential for local production."
The innovation does not end there. The team has also found that mushroom cultivation can help produce biofuel from wood. By using the fungal mycelium's ability to break down lignin and release cellulose, fuels such as ethanol and biogas become easier to make.
"We have succeeded in increasing and maximising lignin degradation while minimising cellulose losses in the process. In this way a spent substrate can be recycled without the thermochemical pretreatment that is normally used to produce ethanol from wood, which accounts for about 30 percent of the total cost of ethanol production."
The aim is now to scale up production in collaboration with industrial partners. The project, conducted within the strategic innovation programme BioInnovation, is an example of how smart, integrated production can help with the challenges facing people and the planet.