Business mushrooms

Related tags Immune system

Exotic products are flooding the European and American food market
these days. Japanese producer Yukiguni Maitake has just patented a
dry process that ensures that the mushrooms arrive in supermarkets
in tip-top condition.

Exotic products are flooding the European and American food market these days as the price of items once thought of as prohibitively expensive declines. The popularity of Japanese maitake mushrooms is a case in point. Japanese producer Yukiguni Maitake has just patented a dry process that ensures that the mushrooms arrive in supermarkets in tip-top condition.

This drying process involves a stable dried active oxygen scavenging agent. This patent is the company's second, following one awarded in 1998 for an extracting process.

And now the firm is looking at the global market. The company, which produces over 110 tons of maitake mushrooms per day year-round - supplying 70 per cent of the Japanese market - has just formed Yukiguni Maitake Manufacturing Corporation of America (YMMCA), which is about to invest €62.6 million to build a 923,000 square foot facility in the state of New York.

This is Yukiguni's first growing plant to be built outside Japan, and could be the first of several expansions.

The YMMCA plant will feature a production process that utilises Yukiguni's new drying technology. The firm's mass production process was developed by Yoshinobu Ohdaira, the founder and president of the parent company, over 20 years ago. The 200 people YMMCA plans to employ at its Sullivan County, NY location will include cultivators, researchers, manufacturers and more.

YMMCA will produce 30 tons of fresh maitake mushrooms per day, as well as process the maitake into its dried and extracted forms through their two US patented processes. YMMCA is scheduled to begin plant construction upon completion of its building permit process, currently underway, and expects to open some time in 2004.

While the extract form of the maitake is seen as extremely promising in the alternative medicine field, Yukiguni says that the dried form will offer consumers a less concentrated health tonic having antioxidant properties. The firm claims that in addition to stimulating the immune system, the dried form of maitake, as a scavenger of active oxygen, may also help to impede certain related degenerative diseases.

Thus, this newly patented drying process is expected to have a huge impact on the nutraceutical corporate market, providing ingredients for dietary supplements, functional food products, and more. Since Yukiguni​ received the first patent for its extracting process in 1998, researchers across the world have been conducting their own studies on the medicinal value of maitake.

Related topics Processing & Packaging

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