Professor Takeshi Hiraguri of the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Communication Engineering, Nippon Institute of Technology focused on "paper" as a medium for growing shiitake mushrooms, and as a result of experiments, he confirmed that shiitake fruiting bodies were generated from medium such as used copy paper.
Shiitake mushrooms decompose the dietary fiber (cellulose) contained in wood and grow as a source of nutrients.As a traditional cultivation method, there is inoculum cultivation of konara oak and sawtooth oak logs.On the other hand, the revolutionary "fungus bed cultivation method" invented 30 years ago made it possible to cultivate shiitake mushrooms all year round using a fungus bed in which raw wood was crushed and hardened into blocks and inoculated.Although this method is now widely used, the generation of a large amount of waste fungus bed after harvesting has become an environmental problem.
In order to solve this problem, Professor Hiraguri proposed the cultivation of shiitake mushrooms using paper, a material that contains cellulose (pulp) and can be stored for a long time.Advantages of paper media are that they can absorb enough moisture and are easy to dispose of after cultivation.It creates an environment suitable for cultivation and facilitates cultivation management.Furthermore, the used copy paper can be reused, and disposal is relatively easy, which contributes to reducing the environmental load.
This proposal was adopted for the Nippon Institute of Technology's 2022 SDGs activity subsidy, and this time, a report was made at the end of the activity year.In Professor Hiraguri's experiment, Japanese paper, used copy paper, and newspaper were prepared, cut with a shredder, soaked with water, and hardened. I created the above three patterns of fungal bed media and planted shiitake fungi.As a result, it was confirmed that fruiting bodies of shiitake mushrooms were generated in all patterns, demonstrating that cultivation in paper medium is possible.
As an application of this research, a ``sponge medium'' in which a sponge is directly impregnated with cellulose powder and bran (nutrition) generated from paper can be considered.Sponges can be reused by refilling them with nutrients.In addition, if this sponge medium is constructed in a straight line, it will be possible to cultivate shiitake mushrooms in a single line, and in the future, automatic harvesting by robots can be expected.
