Miracle Grass

Mushrooms and grass, seemingly unrelated, have been innovatively combined by a Chinese agro-scientist to create miraculous results in poverty alleviation.

In the 1980s, farmers in Fujian Province in southeast China felled trees and used wood chips and sawdust to grow mushrooms. The mushroom industry helped local farmers increase their income, but Lin Zhanxi, then a technician at the Fungus Research Institute of Sanming City in Fujian, worried about the ecological impact of lumbering.

To reduce the environment damage, Lin tried to replace timber with grass as a substrate for growing fungi. In 1986, he managed to cultivate edible. For his discovery, Lin won the gold prize in 1992 at the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva, the most important invention exhibition in the world.