Consortium meeting of the European ERA-IB project “funCHI” in Münster

From Monday morning to lunch-time on Tuesday, the German, Dutch, and Spanish partners of the European Research Area - Industrial Biotechnology project “Fungal Chitosans from Fermentation Mycelia for Plant Biostimulants - funCHI” met in Münster to discuss the progress of our work and to plan the work for the coming, final months of the project. Most importantly, we compared the results of the different structural and functional analyses performed by the partners on the different fractions obtained from the fungal mycelium using the fractionation protocol developed during our project. We identified the most promising fractions based on their chitin content and their ability to elicit disease resistance reactions in Arabidopsis plants. We also identified the most promising fungal cell wall mutants generated during the project with the aim to increase chitin contents and extractability. Combining these results, we designed the final experiments to be performed to reach the overall goal of the project, namely the generation of novel strains of Aspergillus niger for the improved production of technical enzymes combined with the extraction of chitinous cell wall fractions with plant biostimulant activity from the waste fungal mycelium. We are confident to reach proof-of-concept for this approach within the remaining life-time of the project, and to document our results in joint publications in international scientific journals.