Autonomous mushroom cultivation using a three-dimensional culture medium supported by a 3D printed anisotropic elastic structure

Abstract

Mushrooms grow so fast during the harvest season that they can double in size in a day. However, the soft and fragile nature of mushrooms makes manual harvesting of domestic brand varieties a necessity, and harvest losses frequently occur. Therefore, an important industrial issue in the efficiency of mushroom cultivation in Japan is how to make mushrooms easy to harvest and grow. The technical elements of mushroom harvesting are 1) non-damaging harvesting methods, 2) control of colony growth, and 3) expansion of growing area. This study proposes a three-dimensional and deformable culture medium supported by a 3D printed anisotropic elastic structure to solve the problems 1)-3). It shows that two things can be done: increase production due to the three-dimensional shape and simplify harvesting due to the deformation of the medium. In addition, we will discuss how the IoT of cultivation will lead to autonomy, which is expected to solve the labor shortage problem.