Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Wild mushroom harvesting is a booming activity in Canada, mostly in Québec, Ontario and British-Columbia.*Considered by some as a recreational activity, the harvest of wild mushrooms has also raised a commercial*interest and now, numerous companies are engaged in picking, transformation and sale of those mushrooms.*However, the time invested to find good picking areas entails a high retail price compared with commercial*products. The high retail price can be explained essentially by two factors: 1) wild mushrooms are picked in*small quantities, they are available during a short period and therefore most people don't include them in their*regular diet, 2) the lack of confidence in the identification renders the consumers hesitant to pay a high price*for a potentially toxic product. The latter can be justified by the fact that Canada is host of several toxic and*some deadly species, if consumer would be entirely sure of the identification they would more readily consume*(and pay for) those products. However, both the MAPAQ (in Québec) and the Canadian Food Inspection*Agency (CFIA) lack the personnel, the ability and the tools to provide an accurate identification of the wild*mushrooms. The project crafted by Progigraph want to tackles these two issues: supply and security. Through*the development and use of molecular barcodes Progigraph will add to its current mushroom harvesting*predictive GIS database. Moreover, Progigraph will use new state-of-the-art long read Illumina sequencing to*assess environmental complex samples down to the species level. The generated Barcodes will be made public*through the International BarCode of Life Database (iBOLD) and will then be available for use by the MAPAQ*and CFIA and regulatory organisms.