Oyster mushrooms cleaning ditches and trenches. This is the solution with which MycoFarming aims to establish itself. Their biological filtration method cleans the water as the fungi grow, providing an innovative, sustainable solution to the nitrogen crisis that does not place a heavy burden on agricultural production or the environment.

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?’