Grow your own protein: Utilizing local agro-waste as filamentous fungi’s substrate

The challenge

Novel protein rich source, especially on food containing plant-based protein, is recently in high demand to be the answer the needs of an increase in human population of 8 billion people by 2050. However, it is a quite challenging issue to produce sustainable, nutritious, and tasty protein to meet human protein needs. Some crops need a large cultivated area to produce high yield, while the area is not sufficient for agricultural activities due to a high pace of urbanization and economic-development. Moreover, agro waste is also increasing in number and type. Meanwhile, certain type of agrowaste claimed to have a high protein-content was, however, not yet treated properly, thus it adds more problems to the environment as well as brings no value to provide sufficient a high-protein food for future generation.

The solution

Our team propose the use of filamentous fungi substrate of agrowaste generation for protein-rich food production to potentially meet the needs of novel protein food (NPFs). Fungal biomass protein as extracted of agro-waste can be a potential solution for this problem as it can convert the waste into high-protein product without requiring wide area for cultivation. Furthermore, it can also add the commercial value of the waste/by-product and thus improve the farmer’s welfare and provide more certain revenue regardless the unstable weather which can affect their crop.