When we consider of mushrooms and the southern Mexico condition of Oaxaca, the first factor which typically arrives to mind is María Sabina, Huautla de Jiménez and hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. But slowly and gradually which is all changing as a end result of the groundbreaking perform of Josefina Jiménez and Johann Mathieu in mycology, through their firm, Mico-lógica.

Dependent in the village of Benito Juárez, found in Oaxaca’s Ixtlán district (a lot more frequently known as the Sierra Norte, the state’s major ecotourism region), Mico-lógica’s mission is threefold: to teach the two Mexicans and visitors to the region in the lower-expense cultivation of a variety of mushroom species to teach about the medicinal, nutritional and environmental (sustainable) worth of mushrooms and to conduct ongoing study regarding ideal climatic regions and the diversity of substrata for mushroom lifestyle.

The French-born Mathieu moved to Mexico, and in reality to Huautla de Jiménez, in 2005. “Yes, coming all the way to Mexico from France to go after my desire in mushrooms looks like a prolonged way to journey,” Mathieu described in a latest job interview in Oaxaca. “But there actually wasn’t considerably of an possibility to carry out research and grow a business in Western Europe,” he continues, “since reverence for mushrooms had been all but completely eradicated by The Church above the system of hundreds of years and I realized that Mexico still maintains a regard and appreciation for the medicinal and dietary benefit of hongos. Mexico is much from mycophobic.”

Huautla de Jiménez is a lot more than a five hour generate from the closest metropolitan center. Appropriately, polka dot shroom bars or later realized that keeping in Huautla, even though keeping an historic allure and currently being in a geographic location conducive to functioning with mushrooms, would hinder his efforts to grow a enterprise and cultivate widespread interest in finding out about fungi. Mathieu grew to become cognizant of the burgeoning track record of Oaxaca’s ecotourism communities of the Sierra Norte, and without a doubt the Feria Regional de Hongos Silvestres (regional wild mushroom pageant), held annually in Cuahimoloyas.

Mathieu met Josefina Jiménez at the summertime weekend mushroom function. Jiménez experienced moved to Oaxaca from hometown Mexico Metropolis in 2002. The two shared comparable pursuits Jiménez experienced analyzed agronomy, and for shut to a ten years had been functioning with sustainable agriculture projects in rural farming communities in the Huasteca Potosina region of San Luis Potosí, the mountains of Guerrero and the coast of Chiapas. Mathieu and Jiménez grew to become organization, and then daily life partners in Benito Juárez.

Mathieu and Jiménez are concentrating on three mushroom species in their arms-on seminars oyster (seta), shitake and reishi. Their a single-day workshops are for oyster mushrooms, and two-day clinics for the latter two species of fungus. “With reishi, and to a lesser extent shitake, we’re also instructing a truthful little bit about the medicinal utilizes of mushrooms, so more time is essential,” claims Mathieu, “and with oyster mushrooms it really is predominantly [but not exclusively] a system on cultivation.”

While training seminars are now only given in Benito Juárez, Mathieu and Jiménez plan to increase operations to consist of equally the central valleys and coastal regions of Oaxaca. The object is to have a community of producers developing various mushrooms which are optimally suited for cultivation based mostly on the specific microclimate. There are about 70 sub-species of oyster mushrooms, and as a result as a species, the adaptability of the oyster mushroom to different climatic locations is impressive. “The oyster can be grown in a multitude of various substrata, and that is what we are experimenting with right now,” he elucidates. The oyster mushroom can prosper when grown on products which would in any other case be squander, this sort of as discard from cultivating beans, sugar cane, agave (such as the fibrous squander produced in mezcal distillation), peas, the widespread river reed recognized as carriso, sawdust, and the listing goes on. Agricultural squander which may possibly normally be remaining to rot or be burned, every with adverse environmental implications, can form substrata for mushroom cultivation. It must be observed, even though trite, that mushroom cultivation is a extremely sustainable, environmentally friendly industry. In excess of the earlier several many years Mexico has in simple fact been at the fore in a lot of regions of sustainable sector.

Mathieu exemplifies how mushrooms can provide an arguably even higher environmental great:

“They can maintain up to 30 thousand moments their mass, obtaining implications for inhibiting erosion. They have been used to thoroughly clean up oil spills through absorption and as a result are an crucial automobile for habitat restoration. Study has been carried out with mushrooms in the struggle in opposition to carpenter ant destruction it really is been suggested that the use of fungi has the likely to totally revamp the pesticide market in an environmentally welcoming way. There are literally hundreds of other eco-helpful purposes for mushroom use, and in every case the mushroom remains an edible by-product. Take a appear at the Paul Stamets YouTube lecture, six Techniques Mushrooms Can Help save The Globe.”

Mathieu and Jiménez can usually be found offering their products on weekends in the natural markets in Oaxaca. They are each a lot more than satisfied to talk about the nutritional price of their items which range from in a natural way their clean mushrooms, but also as preserves, marinated with possibly chipotle and nopal or jalapeño and cauliflower. The mushroom’s vitamin B12 are not able to be found in fruits or vegetables, and appropriately a diet plan which involves fungi is really essential for vegetarians who can’t get B12, most frequently contained in meats. Mushrooms can simply be a substitute for meats, with the edge that they are not loaded with antibiotics and hormones typically discovered in industrially processed meat merchandise.

Mico-lógica also offer teas and extracts made from distinct mushroom species, every single formulated as either a nutritional dietary supplement, or for their medicinal qualities. Although neither Mathieu nor Jiménez has the pharmacological history to prescribe mycological remedy for critical conditions, Mathieu’s own analysis factors to the medicinal use of mushrooms courting from pre-history, to the existing. He notes properties of mushrooms which can help to restore the immune system, and hence the use of fungi as a enhance in the remedy of most cancers and AIDS, and their utility in controlling diabetes and treating high cholesterol.

“We must all be embracing the organic and natural manufacturing of mushrooms,” Mathieu concludes. “It really is so simple, it involves a minimum money investment decision, and it gives considerable benefits, each for these ingesting hongos for dietary and medicinal causes, and for the producers, even small scale. Mico-lógica also sells dried mushrooms. But most of the dried mushrooms marketed in Mexico are imported from China, and are not natural and organic. It’s a real shame on several levels.”

Mexico and mushrooms have come a extended way considering that the period of Oaxaca’s María Sabina. With the continued initiatives of Mathieu, Jiménez and Mico-lógica, it need to not be extended before the globe understands and embraces the magic of mushrooms within a a lot broader context.