FUNGUSCHAIN – 1st press release
The project, with a budget of 11 million euros, is co-funded by the Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The BBI JU is a new €3.7 billion Public-Private Partnership between the EU and the Bio-based Industries Consortium. It is an industry driven initiative aiming to boost the bio-based economy.
FUNGUSCHAIN will make use of new cascading processes to extract high value molecules from residues from mushroom farming, following the requirements of a range of end-users. A first extraction will yield antimicrobials & antioxidants, proteins, polyols and polysaccharides. Further processing will complete the value chain for delivering cleaning, food and plastic products. The remaining residues will be used for composting or biogas synthesis, thus closing the agricultural cycle. BDS will coordinate, but will also be involved in identifying bio-active fractions of interest and will develop and employ early stage safety evaluations of the potential end products using green chemistry approaches.
Participants: 4 large industries (Corbion, Novamont, S.p.A, Monaghan Mushrooms Group, Saponia d. d.) 8 SMEs (BioDetection Systems BV, Biotrend SA, Biozoon GmbH, Condensia Química SA, Mi-Plast d.o.o., Neem Biotech Ltd., OWS, Tecnaro Gesellschaft zur Industriellen Anwendung Nachwachsender Rohstoffe Gmbh) and 4 research and technology development entities (AITIIP Technology Centre, European Centre for Nanostructured Polymers, University of Alicante and KTH Royal Institute of Technology).