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

SBIR 第一阶段：开发生产羊肚菌子实体的室内方法

• 批准号: 2325697
• 负责人: Bradford Ermel
• 金额: $ 27.5万
• 依托单位: ALL-IN PEPPERS AND SPECIALTY PRODUCE LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-01-15 至 2024-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2325697&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Developing; Indoor; Method

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.

这个小企业创新研究 (SBIR) 第一阶段项目创造了适合残疾人使用的食品生产设备，用于种植高营养的羊肚菌。创造适合残疾人使用的设备可以为服务严重不足的人口提供更多工作，并为经常工作的农民提供更多的员工基础。该项目还关注农村和城市粮食荒漠中的农民，这些地方的剩余定殖琼脂培养基和子实体将被脱水并提取成进一步的营养补充剂。他们的菌丝体营养丰富，对健康有许多好处，让公众更容易持续购买蘑菇将改善美国人的健康和福祉，羊肚菌供应量的增加将使其广泛用于营养用途。补充剂和烹饪界蘑菇烹饪的复兴。该项目基于一种新颖的、独立的方法，使用单一接种步骤在琼脂培养基上生长新鲜羊肚菌 (M. esculenta) 子实体。满足市场需求的商业化生产方法 新鲜羊肚菌的主要供应方式是采摘，这种方式是劳动密集型的，对生态具有破坏性，而且每年的采购机会很小，这严重限制了这种营养丰富、美味可口的产品的供应。为了将这种生产方法推向市场，必须克服两个主要的技术障碍，第一个障碍是证明稳定生产的小气候条件，该项目必须从初步方法中找出一种改进的方法，以便最终确定适当的小气候。第二个目标的条件。 SBIR 的第一阶段成功与否将通过生产与野生蘑菇味道一致或更好的羊肚菌的能力来衡量。羊肚菌的味道将由具有使用经验的厨师团队进行评估。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。