Last June, the Amsterdam start-up won the Academic Start-up Competition, which recognises promising Dutch university initiatives, for their use of oyster mushrooms to filter nitrogen from water.

MycoFarming’s fungi float in bags in ditches and canals, through which contaminated water flows. The mycelium absorbs nitrogen and other nutrients that have leached into the water, cleaning it as the fungi grow. Founder Juan Cruz Tubio (31) is a biology enthusiast.

’As a child, I used to sit on the football pitch and watch the grass and what was happening in the ground rather than play football.’ While studying neuroscience at VU University Amsterdam, Tubio realised that mushrooms are effective at cleaning waste. Tubio: ’If there is an organism that can tackle our pollution problem, why not domesticate it?’

Nutrients from manure

Before starting to grow mushrooms, Tubio read a few hundred articles on mycofiltration and eutrophication. ‘Then I emailed the author of one of the best articles, Osayomwanbo Osarenotor.’ This Nigerian scientist conducts research into the biological remediation of wastewater, and according to Tubio, he was the first to map the uptake of nitrogen and phosphorus by fungi. Tubio welcomed Osarenotor as a scientific advisor and MycoFarming quickly grew into a four-person research and engineering team.

‘If there is an organism that already tackles our pollution, why not just domesticate it?’

With MycoFarming, Tubio aims to provide a solution to environmentally harmful nitrogen surpluses from agriculture and other sources. Crops use less than half of the nutrients in manure for growth. The rest ends up in the environment. In an attempt to limit this pollution, the Dutch government has announced plans to reduce the number of farms by 2025. ’But we can’t just close our farms. That would cause society to collapse’, says Tubio. ’The Netherlands produces 20 per cent of all meat and dairy products consumed in Europe. At the same time, nutrients such as phosphorus are non-renewable and costly to extract in terms of both money and energy.’ Therefore, wasting it would also be irresponsible. According to Tubio, it’s a case of choosing between two lesser evils. ’If you close the farms, society will collapse. If you don’t, the world will collapse.’

Water quality

In terms of water quality, MycoFarming offers a third option: repairing the nitrogen leak. MycoFarming’s nutrient-eating oyster mushrooms can be reused as a valuable raw material for the agricultural sector. The start-up is currently based in the Demonstrator Lab at VU University Amsterdam, which Tubio describes as ‘a place where you can build and test things’.

As his company is producing an increasing amount of mushrooms, they are moving to a farm to expand their cultivation facilities. MycoFarming also collaborates with start-ups that produce agricultural robots and sustainable packaging. They also work with larger companies such as the water company Waternet and Rijkswaterstaat. Tubio: ’Since this year, we have been running pilot projects to remove oil and microplastics from rainwater runoff.

‘We are running pilot projects to remove oil and microplastics from rainwater runoff.’

The next step is to start even more pilot projects. ‘For example, we want to test how our oyster mushrooms can filter various waste substances from soils that are washed out in other ways’, explains Tubio. ‘We also want to produce other types of substrate that absorb nutrients and contaminants even more efficiently.’ The ultimate goal is to meet water quality standards throughout the Netherlands within five years. ‘But hopefully we can do that within three years.’

According to Tubio, the government will have to help. ‘Bureaucracy has slowed us down. For example, we submitted an application to a government fund for initiatives that tackle Dutch problems. This was for initiatives tackling the nitrogen crisis. But, according to the assessors, our solution was not innovative enough because we could not find external experts to validate it. After all, the brightest minds were already in our team.’