The purpose of this project is the exploitation of olive, olive oil and wine-making by-products as substrates for the production of Pleurotus mushrooms of high nutritional value, through the use of Greek native strains, and the development of a new multi-functional food (“mushroom snack”) that will be fully featured – evaluated through clinical and organoleptic tests as well as chemical and metabolomic analyses.
This will be achieved through the following objectives:
- Exploitation of olive, olive-oil and wine-making by-products (with problems in management due to the large production volume and their particular composition) for the production of high added value food.
- Determination of substrates effect on the cultivation parameters and quality of the produced P. ostreatus and P. eryngii mushrooms.
- Utilization of the most profitable native Greek strains of the aforementioned species (collection of fungi LGAM-AUA) and the most suitable substrate on the basis of productivity and concentration of selected bioactive ingredients for cultivation on a commercial scale.
- Optimization of exposure conditions of mushrooms to ultraviolet radiation for maximizing their vitamin D content.
- Development of an innovative multi-functional product (mushroom snack) of “high-nutritional value” through appropriate processing and after appropriate organoleptic tests and chemical analyzes.
- Determination of the effect of the developed “mushroom snack” consumption on the regulation of cardio-metabolic markers and vitamin D levels in serum of volunteers after a clinical study.
- Study of the effect of the new product on the blood serum metabolic profile of volunteers in the clinical study through holistic metabolomic analysis.