Panel Discusion: Pasteurization versus sterilization of substrates
Biography:
In 1980, due to the great passion for mushroom cultivation, I founded the company “Funghi San Giorgio” which I have continued to manage up to now.
Initially, the company produced only Agaricus but later it was decided to change the type of crop and so the production of Pleurotus Ostreatus, Shiitake and Pholiota nameko mushrooms was started.
In 2003 began my collaboration with the company Agrifung of Treviso directing the production of pasteurized compost in tunnels and the cultivation of mushrooms Pleurotus Ostreatus and Pholiota Aegerita (Pioppino) within the company Funghi di Signoressa owned Agrifung and to all of the customers in Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Malta, Cyprus. The collaboration with Agrifung ended in 2012.
Subsequently I dedicated myself to the cultivation of exotic mushrooms at my company and the experimentation of substrates and their cultivation in innovative ways aimed mainly at poor and developing countries.
For this reason I designed the so called “Fungitainer system”, a system based on the reuse of old containers which has been designed to be installed in countries where there is no electricity and no technological means are available.
In recent years I have designed and started up some new companies for the production of pasteurized Pleurotus mushroom compost and related crops in Canada, Georgia, Greece, Italy