Technology for growing mushrooms from dirty soil

Used children and adults are contributing to increasing the burden of waste disposal for people today. Mexican scientists have found a unique solution to that problem: using dirt to grow mushrooms.

The researchers found that the fungus grows thanks to cellulose, a diaphragm. By crushing used diapers, they created 'diaphragm fertilizer' for growing fungi.

On average, a child uses more than 8,000 pieces of diapers before learning how to go to the potty or toilet bowl, creating up to 2 tons of slow decomposed garbage. Meanwhile, Mexico is currently a diapers consumer, both for children and adults, the third largest in the world.

This fact makes a Mexican scientist design a technology that can decompose diaper materials by using Pleurotus ostreatus .

The researchers claim that the mushroom grown from diapers has been used non-toxic and has a good taste and nutritional content such as fungi grown in other common ways.(Photo: Daily Mail)

'The idea arises after I consider the cellulose mushroom, a material contained in diapers, but also note that diapers contain non-biodegradable artificial ingredients such as polyethylene, polypropylene and super absorbent gel ( sodium polyacrylate, which specializes in liquid extraction, ' explained Rosa María Espinosa Valdemar of the Autonomous University of the Capital (Mexico).

Valdemar Espinosa said the first step is to collect used diapers, but they must be diapers that contain only waste liquids such as urine. The diapers are then sterilized by autoclave, crushed and mixed with some other material containing a substance called lignin (a fungus that is also needed to grow) from grass, grape pulp, coffee or pineapple buds.

The whole process is called the preparation of substrate for mushroom cultivation . Next, Valdemar Espinosa and colleagues took a handful of mushroom seeds - developed mushroom spores on wheat or sorghum - and sprinkled them on the substrate, then put the mixture into a plastic bag.

The cultivating bags are then kept in the dark for 2-3 weeks, under controlled temperature and humidity conditions, then switched to light exposure. After 2.5 - 3 months, the diaphragm decomposes and reduces volume and volume by up to 80%.

According to the research team, if they apply their mushroom cultivation technology with 1 kg of diapers, at the end of the process, they will get 200-300g of mushrooms.

After harvesting the fungus according to the new method, the experts analyzed and discovered, the fungus grown from diapers does not contain toxic substances or the contagious infectious disease has been sterilized. They also found that the growth of protein, fat, vitamins and minerals in the fungus on the diaphragm was comparable to the fungi grown in other normal ways.

However, Mrs. Espinosa Valdemar admits, most likely, consumers will be afraid to eat mushrooms from diapers. Even so, the mushroom harvested by this technology can be used as an additional source of feed for cattle and poultry. And the super absorbent gel in the diaper can be reused to increase the ability to retain moisture for the farmland.