The U.S. Department of Defense is investing in research to study ways to address food scarcity. Finger Lakes Community College (FLCC) has received $100,000 in a national contest to develop solutions to food scarcity.
The New York college and its partners will use the money to continue work on a research project that involves cultivating mushroom fibers for their nutritional content.
FLCC began a partnership with Henrietta-based Empire Medicinals four years ago to study methods for growing mushroom mycelium in a commercial setting. Mycelium are the rootlike fibers that extend below mushroom caps into rotting logs. If mycelium can be efficiently mass produced, their nutrients can be extracted and used in a variety of foods and food supplements.
FLCC entered the research project in BioMADE BUILD, a national academic challenge for college teams and industry mentors. Earlier this month, BioMADE announced that FLCC was among seven projects chosen for funding. FLCC is the only project that has a community college as the lead agency.
“This is a very competitive program, so we were excited to find out that the proposal reviewed strongly and was selected for funding,” said James Hewlett, FLCC professor of biology.
BioMADE is a U.S. Department of Defense institute created to promote innovation in the use of biological systems to make food and other products. It is part of national efforts to improve supply chains following the Covid pandemic.
The name of FLCC’s project is “Submerged fermentation of mushroom mycelium for optimizing the production of mycelial-based food and nutritional products.”
“Our academic challenge focuses on finding solutions to problems related to food scarcity in rural and urban environments and bioproduced foods for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,” Hewlett explained. “Our student research group has been developing a fermentation system for producing mushroom mycelium and the nutritional compounds they generate, so shifting to this food challenge was a natural fit.”
“Mushroom mycelium is a nutrient-dense food with great potential for developing products that are highly nutritious and affordable and can be grown in environmentally sustainable production systems,” he added.
Hewlett, founder of the Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative (CCURI), was named a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in 2021 for his work promoting the use of research to teach science at community colleges across the county.
With the new funding, FLCC and Empire Medicinals will continue the work with the National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. This next stage will focus on finding a cheap and widely available food source for the mushroom mycelium to convert into nutrients for humans.
“Mycelium needs food to grow, so if the amount of food going into production equals the amount you get out, that is obviously not a sustainable solution. NCERC and FLCC will work on using the waste that ethanol producers create. By using waste streams, you avoid the problem of using food to make food,” Hewlett explained. “We are also going to be testing the production of feed stocks from municipal solid waste, another abundant and readily available material.”
In the first phase of the project, Hewlett and his team of student researchers, faculty and staff are currently testing the experimental feed stocks from NCERC. The second phase takes place at NCERC to demonstrate that production can be done at a commercial scale.
The project also serves the goal of exposing students to research methods and training the next generation of workers in biomanufacturing.
Current student researchers are:
- Matthew Brooks, a 2021 FLCC biotechnology graduate
- Joshua Serody, an FLCC student who has transferred to a Cornell University food science program
- Asa McKaig, a horticulture student
- Andrew Schorr, a biotechnology student
- Logan Peer, an FLCC student who has transferred to a Rochester Institute of Technology biotechnology program
- Paul D. Kuehnert, a horticulture and biotechnology student
- Jocelyn Aitchison, a student at SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry
In addition to Hewlett, the students work with technical specialist Jessica Halliley and adjunct instructor Sarad Parekh, also chief technology officer at Sweetwater Energy.
