Fungi Fashion? Scientists Explore Possibilities of Producing Mushroom Leather Faster, More Easily

Fashion designers are searching for leather alternatives. Growing mycelium leather substitutes with paste media has unleashed the possibility of cultivating the material more easily and growing it faster.

Mycelium Leather

Researchers looking into how to cultivate and grow this leather more effectively tried to test their hypothesis by cultivating and harvesting mycelium leather mats with a new paste of their design as a substrate. This was noted in the "Growing mycelium leather: a paste substrate approach with post-treatments" study.

These materials provide an environmentally sustainable and low-cost alternative to petroleum-based materials. They also serve as an ethical and more sustainable alternative to leathers that are typically derived from animals. These novel ones can be cultivated using different industrial organic and agricultural waste or side streams.

With a higher production scale and uptake, such products could become more economically viable than traditional methods. They could also be optimized for consumer demands.

ALSO READ: Leather Made From Mushroom? Mycelium Used To Create a Self-Healing Wearable Material

Mushroom Cultivation For Mycelium Leather

As part of the study, the researchers looked into the compatibility of mushrooms so they could work on leather mat development. They mainly used two species of fungi: Ganoderma lucidum (reisi), a medicinal mushroom typically used for bio-design, and Pleurotus djamor (pink oyster), a gourmet mushroom with a tendency for fast colonization of the substrate and entry towards the fruiting stage. In other words, pink oysters produce mushroom fruit bodies quickly.

By developing a new paste substrate for growing these mushrooms, the scientists wanted to boost their nutrient availability, allow their scalability, and streamline the cultivation process.

Different mushroom species have their substrate preferences. This means that a crucial part of mushroom growing and mycelium leather production involves matching the mushrooms with the best substrate available. The most common substrates include manure, coffee grounds, and straw.

Mycelium leather is produced by fungal growth as a biological tissue or mat over a liquid or solid substrate. It may also be done as a fungal biomass submerged inside liquid fermentation.

While fermentation in the solid state offers better conditions for growth, liquid-state fermentation on the surface allows mats of mycelium to be more easily harvested. However, growth rates are slower because of the lower oxygen levels. Moreover, fermentation in the liquid state also boosts yields, though the product should be manipulated further for a mycelium mat to be produced.

Given such challenges, the researchers came up with a new cultivation method based on a substrate of paste consistency. This substrate provides benefits of high-nutrient content and small particle size of nutrients, which boosts nutrient uptake.

The researchers discovered that using the particular paste allowed them to grow thicker mycelium mats in a shorter period. This is in comparison to growth on a liquid culture or nutrient-enriched agar.

In addition, the benefits of such a method were also more apparent during the harvesting stage, as the mats were strong enough to be peeled without the need for sheet cutting.

Assia Crawford, the study's lead author from the University of Colorado, says that as the world is searching for more sustainable alternatives, the investment in living organism use has been growing. This has been done to produce biodegradable alternatives that yield low environmental impacts. This is the case for mycelium leather, an eco-friendly alternative.

Crawford explains that bio-design methods such as this one contribute to the development of material alternatives that are scalable, high-quality, and biodegradable. With this, they may address the environmental challenges posed by the high consumption of textiles.

The researchers add that, as researchers, they are responsible for developing better materials to respond to the climate change crisis.