SBIR Phase I: Developing an Indoor Method to Produce Morel Mushroom Fruiting Bodies

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目为种植高度营养的羊肚菌创造了对残疾友好的食品生产设备。创造对残疾人友好的设备，可以为服务严重不足的人口提供更多工作，为农民提供更大的员工基础，他们经常需要比他们找到的更多的员工。该项目还关注农村和城市粮食沙漠的农民，那里的营养需求得不到满足。残留的琼脂基质和子实体将被脱水并提取到进一步的营养补充中。羊肚菌及其菌丝体被证明含有丰富的营养物质，对健康有许多好处。让普通公众更容易始终如一地购买蘑菇将改善美国人的健康和福祉。羊肚菌的大量供应将使它们在营养补充剂中得到广泛的应用，并使蘑菇烹饪在烹饪世界中复兴。该项目基于一种新的、自给自足的方法，即在琼脂培养基上使用单一接种步骤培养新鲜羊肚菌(M.esculenta)子实体。目前还没有满足市场需求的现有商业化生产方法。新鲜羊肚菌的主要供应商是通过觅食，这是劳动密集型的，对生态的破坏，每年都有一个很小的采购机会窗口。这严重限制了这种极其营养和美味的食物来源的供应。要将这种生产方法推向市场，必须克服两大技术障碍。第一个障碍是展示保持产量稳定的小气候条件。该项目必须从初步方法中确定一种改进的方法，以便最终确定适当的小气候条件。第二个目标是纳入防止不良影响的保护措施，例如正在进行的木霉菌。困扰全球蘑菇养殖场的流行病。SBIR第一阶段的成功将通过保持产量的能力来衡量，同时生产出口感与野生羊肚菌相当或更好的羊肚菌。品味将由一个经验丰富的厨师团队进行评估。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project creates disability-friendly food production equipment for growing highly nutritious morel mushrooms. Creating equipment that is disability-friendly allows more work for an immensely underserved population and a greater employee base for farmers, who regularly need more employees than they can find. The project also focuses on farmers in both rural and urban food deserts, where nutritional needs aren’t being met. Leftover colonized agar media and fruiting bodies will be dehydrated and extracted into further nutritional supplementation. Morels and their mycelium are shown to be rich in nutrients and have many health benefits. Making the mushrooms easier for the general public to purchase consistently will improve the health and well-being of Americans. The higher supply of morel mushrooms will allow for their use in widespread nutritional supplements and a renaissance of mushroom cooking in the culinary world.This project is based on a novel, self-contained method to grow fresh morel mushroom (M. esculenta) fruiting bodies on agar media using a single inoculation step. There are no existing commercial production methods that meet the market demand. The main supplier of fresh morels is through foraging, which is extremely labor intensive, ecologically destructive, and has a small window of procurement opportunity every year. This severely limits the availability of this incredibly nutritious and delicious food source. Two major technical hurdles must be overcome in order to bring this production method to market. The first hurdle is demonstrating microclimatic conditions for consistent production output. The project must identify a modified approach from the preliminary method in order to definitively determine appropriate microclimatic conditions. The second aim is to incorporate protective measures from adverse effects, such as the ongoing Trichoderma spp. epidemic which plagues mushroom farms worldwide. SBIR Phase I success will be measured by the ability to retain production output while producing morels with consistency of taste equal to or better than wild morels. Taste will be evaluated by a team of chefs who are experienced with their use.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.