Mushrooms can also help solve Africa’s food problems

By: STA Date: 2022. 11. 25. 10:25

Seven research institutes and universities from five countries, including Hungary, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises, are participating in the research project whose goal is to create sustainable, biomass-based food value chains in Africa, the Bay Zoltán Research Center informed MTI. On the Hungarian side, an oyster mushroom growing company also participates in the program.

(Photo: Pixabay)

The aim of the German, Hungarian, Kenyan, Egyptian and Algerian researchers is to ensure that Africa’s explosively increasing food demand can be met in an environmentally friendly way in the future. The research, which also increases the domestic export capacity, in which the Bay Zoltán Research Center and Pilze-Nagy Kft., the agribusiness company that grows oyster mushrooms, which also plays a leading role at the European level, represents Hungary, will end in 2024. The part implemented by the Hungarian partners of the three-year project has a total cost of HUF 96 million. The Hungarian partners are focusing on the development of the technology of growing oyster mushrooms in Africa, the use of by-products of mushroom cultivation, the creation of new local foods containing oyster mushrooms, and the creation and presentation of a model farm that uses environmentally friendly, circular technologies. The new technologies will be applicable on any other continent.

The Bay Zoltán Research Center brings together the knowledge and work of around 160 Hungarian researchers, where development projects adapted to the needs of the domestic and international market are realized; they cooperate with almost 200 partners every year, one of their main areas of expertise is the discovery of innovative solutions that support a sustainable economy.

MTI