From Food to Waste to Food: Developing gourmet mushroom substrate from municipal source separated food waste and forest by-products

Mushrooms hold a great potential for recycling organic wastes. Their cultivation on safer, more eco-friendly and sustainable media receives considerable attention within mushroom science and the industry internationally. At the same time, municipal waste composters, now equipped with advanced technology and more refined waste resources, see a need of better end product utilization. From Food to Waste to Food is a research project focusing on the integration of mushroom growing media production within the existing waste recycling tehnologies. The growing media will consist of ready-to-fruit mushroom culture blocks, which can be shipped to growers for loading into their climate-controlled shelves to yield mushrooms, in Norway and abroad. The microorganismal manipulation necessary in the reactors to obtain this is not straight forward, and demands biotechnological scrutiny. However, it has been done successfully in mini-trials, and theoretical assumptions also indicate that a commercially yielding product sh ould be achievable. We may even find that the necessary steps will result in more environmentally friendly (less smelly) food waste recycling. The project will also focus on commercially cultivated "gourmet" species. The reason for this is both biological and economical: Biological in that mushroom species vary with respect to their growth requirements, thus, some alternative species may prove to be better adapted to this new medium than the traditional button mushroom. Economical in that the market is sh ifting: Now there is a demand for new varieties. Hera Vekst in cooperation with Lindum Ressurs og Gjenvinning are behind the project. They represent different approaches to food waste composting. An integrated system including biogas is a part of the tech nology. The Biological Institute, University of Oslo, in cooperation with other institutes abroad, will perform the microbiological research related to the media and the mushrooms. A PhD fellowship will be emplo