Winemakers and craft distillers in the United States are deliberately incorporating mushrooms into wine and spirits, primarily for their flavour and terroir-evoking qualities rather than any health benefit.

Shroom Sabha is a community-founded, community-led, non-profit festival dedicated to fungi and the many worlds they connect. Conceived by a group of mycophiles who wanted to share their fascination beyond specialist circles, it has grown into India's first and only festival devoted entirely to fungi. More than an annual event, Shroom Sabha is an attempt to cultivate a fungal culture in India—one rooted in curiosity, ecological literacy, creativity, and care. The festival is s

Researchers from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) and São Paulo State University (UNESP) have isolated four fungi from the gut of the cotton bollworm caterpillar (Helicoverpa armigera) and shown, using scanning electron microscopy, that each one can alter the surface of polystyrene film. When fed expanded polystyrene, the caterpillar's gut microbiome shifted, with the yeast genus Diutina declining and potentially plastic-degrading genera including Aspergillus, Ta

The global edible fungi market is projected to reach USD 50.4 billion by 2033, yet high moisture content and rapid deterioration mean roughly 10% of China's crop alone is discarded due to quality loss. Mushrooms spoil through four interlocking processes — respiration, water loss, enzyme-driven browning, and microbial infection — and emerging technologies from cold plasma to chitosan coatings are being developed to interrupt each of them. A review outlines how combining intell

Populations of common midwife toads (Alytes obstetricans) in the Pyrenees have survived outbreaks of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the fungal disease responsible for more vertebrate species extinctions than any other infectious disease in recorded history. Surviving toads secrete antimicrobial peptides from their skin unusually early, during the tadpole phase, giving them protection precisely when the transition to keratin-bearing adult skin makes them most vulnerable to th

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed fPE7max, a gene-editing tool built specifically for filamentous fungi, achieving editing efficiency approaching 90%. By using fPE7max to activate a master regulatory gene called laeA, the team awakened silent biosynthetic pathways across multiple fungal species, yielding eight molecules entirely new to science. Three of those molecules showed early anti-cancer properties in laboratory tests, including one with selec

The Good Food Institute's June 2025 meta-analysis of 55 published techno-economic models finds that biomass fermentation proteins, including mycoprotein, are approaching cost parity with beef and pork, while precision fermentation proteins and microbial oils face a steeper climb. Published models overestimate production costs because they assume smaller scales and lower fermentation concentrations than commercial reality; a private-sector case study from Hawkwood Biotech proj

IFT First 2026 showed fungi delivering protein, fibre and clean-label functionality as an ingredient platform

Dutch-Belgian precision fermentation startup Those Vegan Cowboys has launched Margaret's Finest, a collaborative R&D programme designed to evaluate animal-free casein proteins from multiple mammalian species with food and ingredient industry partners.

visiBINDER is produced from mycelium, the root-like network of fungi, and is designed to meet the durability requirements of paving and infrastructure applications while reducing embedded carbon compared to fossil-derived binders.