New Mushroom Levy R&D investments a win for the industry
The Mushroom Strategic Investment Advisory Panel (SIAP) has confirmed its advice on recommendations to Hort Innovation for the 22/23 financial year.
In a resounding success for mushroom growers, the SIAP supported all ten of the proposed research and development levy funded projects at their May meeting.
This 100% support rate demonstrates the strength achieved through determined collaboration. Hort Innovation have worked closely with the AMGA, growers, and industry stakeholders to ensure the best possible outcome for the industry.
Activities included a joint industry workshop between Marsh Lawson Mushroom Research Committee (MLMRC), AMGA, SIAP and Hort Innovation in December 2021 to itemise the industries high level priorities with alignment to the Mushroom Strategic Investment Plan (SIP) 2022-2026.
Dr Geoff Martin, AMGA Chairman, says this result sends a strong signal of the value of research in the industry. He is particularly enthusiastic about two projects, both of which are real investments in the long-term sustainability of Australian mushroom growing.
“Investing in the sustainable transition away from European sourced peat will advance mushroom farming in Australia and protect it from geopolitical upheavals elsewhere”, Dr Martin said.
“Currently we import all our peat, which makes the industry vulnerable to supply chain issues out of our control.”
Also approved in this round is a commitment to training a new generation of mushroom pathology experts and building expertise and scientific capacity in Australia around mushroom viruses.
Science and research not only provide the innovations required to evolve mushroom growing in a sustainable manner, it is also critical in protecting the industry from disruptions caused by diseases.
“We have a great opportunity to collaborate with Australian universities and the international community, for example Dr Helen Grogan from Tegasc (The Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority) in Dublin, to support a PhD project in mushroom virology, which is especially significant given the recent finding of a possible unique virus X expression in Australia”, Dr Martin said.
“Now more than ever we understand the potential disruption caused by novel viruses. It is vital we maintain expertise to fight any future threats to the industry”.
Other highlights include strategic long-term investments focussing on promoting the health and nutritional benefits of Australian mushrooms.
AMGA Relationship and General Manager Leah Bramich, says these projects will go a long way to cement Australian mushrooms as a healthy, unique, and vital part of the Australian diet.
“Firstly, we are looking to influence a change to the Australian Dietary Guidelines, for mushrooms to be listed as a separate food group. This opportunity only comes round once every 8-years and is paramount to highlighting the uniqueness of mushrooms to both consumers and the health sector.”
“We are also funding a study focussing on the viability of pursuing a health claim for vitamin D, which, coupled with the current CSIRO beta-glucan study, will be very powerful positioning in the health space, and if the claims are successful, will create huge market potential for mushrooms.”
“These new investments and the (completed) Educating Health Professions and (current) Educating Food service projects will all feed into a new multi-year communications program, including a ‘mushrooms for health’ style website, focusing on long term education for health professionals”.
Grower communication and education has not been forgotten in the new investment recommendations, with two new initiatives; a 5-year plan for the Australian Mushroom Industry Conference, which includes bi-annual roadshow, as well as international outbound and inbound study tours open to growers, both of which will facilitate the exchange of ideas among the global mushroom growing community.
“These programs are designed not to fund grower travel directly, but to facilitate educational opportunities for growers, with tours and experiences they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to coordinate. The inbound and outbound study tours will be particularly exciting and highly beneficial for grower levy-payers”.
Updates on all projects will be reported in upcoming issues of Mushroom Link Magazine.
If you want to know more about these or any other Mushroom levy investment, you can talk directly with the Hort Innovation Mushroom Industry Strategic Partner. Mark Spees P: 0439 574 173 @: Mark.Spees@horticulture.com.au
For any media distribution of this information please contact communications@horticulture.com.au
The ten investments:
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The SIAP supported this investment recommendation acknowledging it as a high priority strategic investment for the industry. They recommend a staged approach with stop-go milestones utilising a project reference group (PRG) of experts (local and international) at the evaluation stages of the project. The Request For Proposal (RFP) will be informed by a funded symposium of international experts, ideally at the 2022 National Mushroom Industry Conference.
Strategic Background: Peat is a key component of professional horticulture, used in the production of mushrooms and nursery along with several other industries, due to its favourable physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. It also has a long history as a fuel source with peatlands (bogs) being mined for centuries. With increasing awareness that damaged peatlands are a large source of greenhouse gas emissions (calculated at nearly 5% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions), many countries previously relying on peat production as an industry have now move towards peatland conservation and restoration to meet their commitments to international agreements, including the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2020, Australia imported $16.7M of peat, which represented 1% of global imports (https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/pea), noting that a large proportion of this supplies the mushroom industry. Over the past 18 months, the price of peat has doubled with higher freight costs, increased competition to access peat, and restrictions to supply, leading to an ever-increasing need to source alternate casing substrates. This requires research which builds on the previous studies of substrates, investigating new options to evaluate or develop alternatives which not only provide mushroom growers with a sustainable and affordable resource, but integral is that an alternative consistently provides equivalent (or improved) production in terms of yield and quality.
As Ireland has begun to decommission peatbogs and deep peat extraction (completed by 2035), and Germany/Western Europe beginning to follow this approach (Eastern Europe still offers supply, but unsure of the timeframes in the long term for worldwide supply), peat will become more expensive, increasing cost of production.
The Irish Government has supported a $1.65M Euro project (Beyond Peat and Sustainable Transition) to work on alternate casing substrate. There is value to link with global innovators in this research space to ensure that Australia has viable options and does not duplicate the effort.
This research is a long-term investment to secure an alternative option, before access to peat is lost. This research will allow for the mushroom industry to diversify, to further explore and develop a new substrate and potentially begin to transition to the new option in a phased approach while peat is still available.
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The SIAP supported this investment to assess packaging options that are economically viable and acceptable to retailers and consumers in the Australia context.
Strategic background: There is increasing conversation and push for sustainable packaging in the Australian food supply chain. PET is currently the dominant packaging material and while this is recyclable via kerbside collection, packaging targets and retailer customer charters were signalling that increased sustainability would be necessary. The use of single use soft plastics (PVC wrap) and hard plastics that are not derived mainly from recycled content are going to be under increased pressure to be phased out.
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The SIAP strongly supported this investment.
Strategic background: The Australian Dietary Guidelines is a resource to help Australians to make healthy food choices based on scientifically based nutrition and health information (National Health and Medical Research Centre 2013). The guidelines aim to provide this information to maximise health options and mitigate disease and illness due to poor nutritional choices in the Australian population. A series of companion resources accompany the guidelines to further enable all Australians to access and implement the information.
The Australian Dietary Guidelines are summarised in the form of the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating, which pictorially depicts the separation of food groups and the associated daily or weekly consumption quantity. The food groups are:
Grain (cereal) foods, mostly wholegrain and/or high cereal fiber vegetables
Vegetables and legumes/beans
Lean meats and poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts and seeds and legumes/beans
Fruit
Milk yoghurt, cheese and/or alternatives, mostly reduced fats
There is compelling evidence to suggest that fungi (mushrooms) should be a separate food group in the Australian Dietary Guidelines and that this separation would help to drive consumption by highlighting the specific health and nutritional benefits of mushrooms as distinct from their current vegetable grouping.
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The SIAP supported this strategic long-term investment, focussing on health care professionals as the target audience.
Strategic background: The aim of this project is to systematically collate scientific information and to form an institute for mushroom nutrition, health, and wellness information. The investment is inspired by the Olive Wellness Institute, and the Nuts for Life Program that are backed by science, promote benefits to health care and food service professionals, are supported by a scientific committee, have developed an online resource platform that collates scientific information to produce webinars and attend conferences. Each is underpinned by a systematic literature review and has challenged misconceptions about the health benefits of the respective products. There has been a significant volume of scientifically based research produced, not only through the Mushroom Strategic Levy funded projects, but also international industry and health and nutrition research institutes/universities.
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The SIAP supported this investment, acknowledging that it is important to understand the sustainability position of the industry and underlaying businesses. It will be an important deliverable to develop a tool that can be used at the individual business level to measure sustainability performance.
Strategic background: The Australian mushroom industry has undertaken projects to understand the limitations and risks with regards to environmental constraints and preparedness in climate change. Following on from this, there is an opportunity to provide an updated life cycle assessment (LCA) to review against previously benchmarked data from 2011, to increase mushroom grower’s awareness of how their business and/or industry is performing, track grower uptake on previous recommendations, highlight where improvements have been made and what further research and development is needed to reduce environmental impacts into the future.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a systematic analysis for the range of environmental impacts over the course of the entire life cycle of a product, material, process, or other measurable activity. LCA models the environmental implications of the many interacting systems that make up production.
LCA assesses the environmental aspects and potential impacts of a product, process, or service by:
Compiling an inventory of relevant energy and material inputs and environmental releases
Evaluating the potential environmental impacts of those inputs and releases, and
Interpreting the results to better inform decision-makers
An LCA is delivered through four key stages:
Goal and scope - to define how big a part of product life cycle will be taken in assessment and to what end that assessment will be serving
Inventory analysis - to provide a description of material and energy flows within the product system and the interaction with environment, consumed raw materials, and emissions to the environment.
Impact assessment - of the indicator results of all impact categories
Interpretation of a life cycle - this involves critical review, determination of data sensitivity, and result presentation.
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The SIAP supported this investment pending any regulatory limitations to display prices and ensure there is interest from the retailers.
Strategic background: The investment is to understand what the impact on Mushroom volumes would be if price in retailers were displayed as a per 500g or per 100g basis rather than a per KG basis. Due to the relatively higher price per KG of mushrooms, there is a perception among the industry that this price is an inhibitor to:
Non-category buyers i.e. people who do not engage in the category due to the high price point
Existing buyers purchasing more
NielsenIQ Homescan data shows that the average volume purchased by households per trip is 330g so by displaying the price per KG it is interfering. We have heard anecdotal evidence from sellers that once they changed their display price to per 500g, sales significantly increased.
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The SIAP supported this investment.
Strategic background: Vitamin D is an at-risk nutrient in the Australian population and mushrooms, particularly when UV-exposed, can be a valuable source of this vitamin. Most foods containing vitamin D are from animal sources and their vitamin D is in the form of cholecalciferol (vitamin D3). Mushrooms are unique, as they are a non-animal source of vitamin D, and it is in the form of ergocalciferol (vitamin D2). To substantiate any nutrient or health claim for vitamin D, there must be a minimum of 10% of the regulatory RDI (recommended daily intake) in a serve of food. Schedule 1 of the Food Standards Code specifies that the regulatory RDI of vitamin D is 10μg cholecalciferol. There is no RDI listed for ergocalciferol. This may limit what claims mushrooms can make regarding their vitamin D content and put them at a disadvantage in comparison to other vitamin D containing foods. There is a need to scope the regulations further and determine what can be claimed for mushrooms as a source of vitamin D.
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The SIAP supported this investment.
Strategic background: This investment will deliver a national mushroom industry conference in a biennial rotation with a mushroom industry roadshow to be delivered in key mushroom growing areas. Both types of events will give mushroom growers the opportunity to hear from relevant R&D and marketing experts about how their levy is being invested, while also providing an informal setting where the mushroom industry can interact directly with key Hort Innovation personnel and researchers to gain a greater understanding of the outcomes of their levy projects.
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The SIAP supported this as a worthwhile investment to respond to a critical whole of industry issue and at the same time establishing critical research capacity.
Strategic background: Mushroom Virus X (MVX) complex is the highest priority for biosecurity in the mushroom industry as identified through the biosecurity plan development process. Very little is known about the endemic viruses of mushrooms in Australia and nothing about their ability to cause disease in Agaricus production (e.g., producing MVX-like symptoms).
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The SIAP supported an investment in outbound study tours for researchers, whole of industry stakeholders/coordinators; and in the case of smaller growers on a co-investment basis. The SIAP strongly supported the investment into inbound study tours so that the whole of the Australian industry can benefit from knowledge from international leaders in research and industry.
Strategic background: Strengthening Australian mushroom industry awareness and links with global peers through travel by Australian producers, consultants, and researchers to international conferences/facilities to see innovations first-hand and reciprocal visits by leading international researchers to speak to the Australian industry at industry events. Participants would be expected to contribute toward the costs of their participation and preference would be shown to businesses actively engaged in the Australian R&D program e.g. trial site, contributor or project collaborator. Preference would also be shown to emerging leaders within the mushroom industry.
In addition, the project would seek to sponsor leading international researchers to visit Australia to tour Australian facilities and speak at a local industry event. This would help inject international knowledge related to technology and practices across the Australian industry without requiring every Australian grower to travel abroad. The goal would be to create and strengthen international linkages with key research institutes that could enhance future R&D investments
