The initiatives will be executed by academics from the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences of the UACh.
Lorenzo Palma, Science in Chile.-
Two projects of the Innovation Fund for Competitiveness (FIC) are underway, financed by the Regional Government of Los Ríos and its Regional Council, focused on indigenous communities in the area of wild edible mushrooms and producers and processors of Los Ríos heritage apples. Rivers.
Thus, two academics from the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences of the UACh, will develop high-impact work for rural areas: The , will focus its work with the Kilkilco Indigenous Community and the Puyehue Indigenous Community, with the initiative “Lanco mushrooms: Value of ethnocultural heritage”.
These communities are in the middle of a mountainous topography, surrounded by native forest, forest plantations, grazing meadows and cereal crops, but have faced a significant loss of biodiversity and forest food, as a result of industrial deforestation and poor harvesting practices. non-timber forest products (PFNM.), explains the doctor in Agricultural Sciences.
“One of the objectives of this project is to carry out a sustainable harvest of wild edible mushrooms, train in the identification of harvested species, rescue culinary tradition and develop value-added products that maintain nutritional qualities, increase shelf life and allow achieve better income for the communities”, explained Dr. Briceño, an academic from the Institute of Plant Production and Health of the UACh.
The researcher announced that the project will establish productive units in each of the communities for two of the most cultivated mushrooms in the world, Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushroom) and Lentinules edodes (Shiitake). In this way, the initiative hopes to achieve a constant production of highly nutritious food throughout the year, more sustainable, since it will be able to use wood or agro-industrial residues as growth substrates for fungi and also develop value-added products that can be marketed during throughout the year in the region and in the rest of the country.
In addition to this productive part, the initiative seeks to rescue ethnomycological knowledge, the development of manuals for sustainable harvesting, production, the development of value-added products, and the co-creation of different preparations and pairings, concluded Dr. Briceño.
Innovation in ancestral apples
The Los Ríos region has unique apples, such as lemons, trees adapted to the climatic conditions of the region, but also with organoleptic characteristics, flavor and smell, which favor the production of high-quality ciders and derivatives. Proof of this is that Lemon Apple and Della Chà Ciders, produced in Tralcao, Mariquina commune, were chosen as the best in America, in the recent Copa Cervezas de América 2022.
In this regional context, with unique apples of its kind, Dr. Esteban Basoalto began working on the FIC project “AppleTech Mobile Apple Industrial Plant”, whose beneficiaries are the Cooperativa Agrícola y Sidrícola de Los Ríos (CASIR), together with the co-investigator, Dr. Iván Maureira, Director of the IPSV; Carlos Martínez, Agronomist and project professional and Paola Segovia, as communications manager.
The academic says that efforts have been made to manage and preserve patrimonial farms, to multiply and establish new lemon apple orchards in Los Ríos. What is positive and necessary, but there is still an important gap, “there are no formal efforts that seek to reduce the industrial technological gap associated with the production of ciders, juices and other fermented products by producers in the Region,” explained the doctor. in Agricultural Sciences.
Currently, modern equipment continues to be expensive, which affects regional producers, compromising the achievement of quality standards required by health regulations and the market, and restricting business opportunities.
To solve the gap, this FIC-R initiative in Los Ríos will make available to heritage apple producers and processors, many of them under the Los Ríos Agricultural and Cider Cooperative, a mobile plant with the most recent technology, which will allow the milling, juice production and pasteurization, if required. The processing capacity is 500 kilos per hour.
The proposal not only covers the creation of a new service, which does not exist in the region, nor the country, nor in South America, but also the possibility of generating a product that is not accessible to all producers, such as pasteurized juice and the option to carry out social innovation, given the evident benefits of strengthening small processors and the CASIR cooperative.
“This will not only facilitate reaching the quality standards required by the demand, but also the substantial reduction of the investment cost for each cider producer, who today does not have the technology that enables their entry into the formal market,” concluded Dr. basoalto
According to the Regional Governor of Los Ríos, Mr. Luis Cuvertino, for the Regional Government of Los Ríos it is especially important to support these initiatives that rescue local products, typical of the territory and propose added value to them, strengthening local identity and diversifying production. and economic opportunities for local producers, under competitive conditions that ensure constant quality and market positioning.
