ÄIO's RedOil, produced from upcycled organic waste streams via fermentation, has entered the consumer market through a commercial skincare serum in partnership with Estonian brand tilk!

Swiss fermentation company Planetary has raised $28 million to commercialise a licensing model that turns sugar processing byproducts into proteins, fibres, and enzymes.

Clear-cutting boreal forests does not reduce the total number of ectomycorrhizal fungal species, but permanently alters which species are present, with effects lasting at least a century.

Mushroom species such as Pleurotus ostreatus can degrade up to 95% of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in controlled conditions, pointing to a powerful enzymatic toolkit for cleaning polluted land.

A UK biotech startup is converting waste bread into a high-performance cosmetic oil, offering the beauty industry a credible alternative to palm oil. CleanOil 25 has already received regulatory approval in the UK, EU, and US, and was co-developed with major industry partners THG Labs and Croda. The technology, rooted in a decade of university research, cuts greenhouse gas emissions by over 95% compared to conventional agricultural oils.

A UK startup is using an ancient fungal fermentation technique to transform discarded cocoa shells into a lower-cost, lower-carbon cocoa replacement. Fermtech's Koji Cocoa can reduce production emissions by 98% and cut ingredient costs for manufacturers by up to a third. With £2.5M in fresh funding, the Oxford-based company is moving towards commercial scale at a moment when cocoa prices and supply volatility are at historic extremes.

A Polish research and production centre Instytut Urządzeń Ekstrakcyjnych is applying pharmaceutical-grade supercritical CO₂ extraction to functional mushrooms, producing standardised ingredients with verified bioactive profiles. Their flagship Lion's Mane extract is standardised to 10% hericenones and 22% ergosterol, setting a new benchmark for ingredient transparency. Research conducted with Warsaw's SGGW university confirms that CO₂-extracted oils achieve oxidative stabili

Researchers at Kyoto University and Chosun University used CRISPR/Cas9 to disable gene mbp1 in Pleurotus ostreatus , producing mycelium mats that were approximately 30% stiffer and 50% stronger in tension than unedited controls. The edited fungal strains also produced harder mycelium-based composites under compression testing, and lost the ability to form fruiting bodies, which simplifies industrial production by keeping the fungus in its material-forming growth phase. This

Fungal proteins can trigger ice formation in clouds, offering a potentially safer alternative to silver iodide: the toxic compound currently used in cloud seeding.

Through their underground networks, fungi physically connect to plant roots, enabling the transfer of nutrients and chemical signals between trees: a system ecologists call the "Wood Wide Web."