Project
BIOSCHAMP
The mushroom industry plays an important role in the EU’s nutritional security. It provides a protein-rich alternative to animal products Mushroom cultivation is a highly particular agricultural activity. It has quite a unique set of growing conditions: cultivation is done indoors, at a high humidity (≥70%), at mild temperature (24ºC), and throughout the entire year. These conditions bring advantages, e.g., a stable production without relying on the climatic conditions changes, but also difficulties, e.g. mushroom farms are a highly attractive for the growth of pathogens, especially parasitic fungi or bacteria.
Mushrooms are cultivated on compost, prepared from a mixture of natural manure, wheat straw and chalk, which is covered by casing material predominately existing of peat. Peat is harvested from fields in Germany and Eastern Europe, resulting in a loss of vulnerable ecosystems with a high biodiversity. The EU BIOSCHAMP project aims to develop casing soils with a reduced peat content by using locally produced rest products from agriculture and nature management The casing soils will serve as carrier for selected microbiota acting as crop biostimulant. The developed casing will be analyzed for its social, ecological and economic impact. In addition, the solution will be validated industrially by 4 different mushroom farms across the EU which integrate all the European cropping systems. Wageningen UR is involved in most work packages and work package leader of WP1 (WPR, Evaluation of alternative materials and results from small scale trials records) and of WP6 (WEcR, Security and sustainability).
Mushrooms are cultivated on compost, prepared from a mixture of natural manure, wheat straw and chalk, which is covered by casing material predominately existing of peat. Peat is harvested from fields in Germany and Eastern Europe, resulting in a loss of vulnerable ecosystems with a high biodiversity. Harvest and transport also result in a considerable CO2 emission. Within the EU BIOSCHAMP project alternative casings will be developed with a low peat input on the basis of: 1. Rest products from agriculture and nature management (crop residues, mowed vegetation), 2. The use of sphagnum moss (peat moss) grown on degraded peat bogs, and 3. Spent casing used in the mushroom industry). The casing soil will serve as carrier for selected microbiota acting as crop biostimulant. By supplement of selected biostimulants to the alternative casing it is expected that a high productivity can be guaranteed. The biostimulants are also selected to protect mushrooms against pathogens associated with the substrates, resulting in an expected reduction of the input of crop protection agents. The use of constituents to replace peat will be evaluated for its economic, environmental and social impact via life cycle assessments. The casings will be evaluated in practice by commercial growers across Europe.