Yukiguni Maitake Reports its new Bio-Technology Potential in the Intl Conference ~The used "maitake" mushroom's growing medium to degrade PCB

2007-10-29 - Yukiguni Maitake Company, Ltd.

In the 12th International Conference of the Pacific Basin Consortium for Environment & Health Sciences held in Beijing, during Oct. 27 through 29, in conjunction with Professor Fukuda Masao, PhD of the Department of Bioengineering, Nagaoka University of Technology of Niigata, Japan, Yukiguni Maitake introduced the potentiality of PCB degradation by the recycling of its used maitake mushroom growing medium.

Maitake's used growing medium is usually discarded as agricultural trash or recycled as a resource of heating energy, though, it, in addition to the surviving maitake fungus, contains various organic and harmless materials which are believed to be re-used in many ways. The researchers in US and Japan have been studying such potential of recycling it as animal feed ingredient, medium for making high quality organic fertilizer, brewing bio- and organic ethanol and so on. In addition to those above, if maitake fungus' work to degrade PCB on this study and materialization of such a use are further investigated and researched, it is expected that it will ultimately pave way to the more advanced technology to be applied in remediation of wider range of various hazardous wastes including dioxin.

The Pacific Basin Consortium for Environment & Health Sciences chaired by Professor David Carpenter, MD of University at Albany, New York, USA, is the one of the most renowned organizations in the international environmental academy society, and Dr. Carpenter himself is a globally known mentor gathering high respect from the participants of the PCB research field. Yukiguni gained a relationship with Dr. Carpenter through its efforts to obtain the development authorization for its US maitake mushroom growing plant in the State of New York, in which it disclosed Dr. Carpenter its basic concept of degrading PCB by the maitake's used medium, which contains fermented sawdust and residual corn meal and wheat bran as well as surviving maitake fungus and mycelium. Dr. Carpenter enthusiastically encouraged Yukiguni to have the opportunity to introduce its concept in the upcoming annual meeting chaired by him.

In the oral presentation presented by Prof.Fukuda of Nagaoka Tech. in Beijing yesterday, it was reported that very encouraging results had been confirmed in the series of tests of mixing maitake's fungus and PCB molecules, and there would be a good potentiality the study would step up to the next level where the maitake's used sawdust could directly purify PCB contaminated soil.

This study already has a 10-years history shared by Nagaoka Tech. and Yukiguni Maitake, and in regards to the future materialization of this idea, Dr. Fukuda give a comments as follows.

“It's my pleasure to have a chance to present our research results on PCB degradation by maitake mushroom. In Japan, the governmental committee recently approved a preliminary remediation project of dioxin contamination using white-rot fungi. However in this idea, they have to grow white-rot fungi in a large scale, which is somewhat expensive. Tb the contrary, bio-remediation employing waste bio-mass of edible mushroom is very cost-effective, and is expected to be a very powerful tool to clean-up PCB's and dioxin's contamination."

Meanwhile, Dr. Carpenter, who showed a decent interest in this bio-tech idea being derived from Japan's mushroom cultivation, is saying as below with an expectation of positive influence to not only the American environmental conservation but the one in broader region which will be exported from the local maitake mushroom cultivation by Yukiguni.

"One of the major goals at this years' meeting of the Pacific Basin Consortium is to provide information about new technologies that may be useful in cleaning up environmental contamination. We are pleased that Yukiguni Maitake has supported Dr. Fukuda to present his very interesting and potentially very important data on a new method for remediation of PCB-contaminated sites around the world"

Mr. Yoshinobu Odaira, Yukiguni's president, who is the pioneer of mass cultivation of maitake in Japan and the originator of the idea of degrading PCB by maitake's used medium is commenting as follows with his ambition, "Although, we would need further and continuous research and development for the practical degradation of PCB polluted soil through the maitake's used sawdust, it is great and honorable that our basic study was spotlighted as a new bio-technique by the experts in the major international conference like this. We are very much encouraged to extend our study to the next utilization stage.