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The “Small-scale compact mushroom cultivation system with built-in irrigation” (A.K.A: mushroom-machine) is a proposal with which we won the UN Robot 2020 innovation challenge. It consists of a semi-automatic mushroom cultivation machine designed for People living in war zones.

Problem Statement

Malnutrition problems worldwide are one of the biggest problems of humanity, many times caused by limitations that individuals have to obtain nutritious and low-cost food in adverse conditions such as armed conflict, climate, poverty, among other things. The latest estimates indicate that in 2018 about 821 million people in the world suffered from malnutrition; or what is what same, 1 in 10 human beings. In fact, hunger and malnutrition are the main risk health worldwide, even greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. This problem not only affects people’s health, but also their quality of life, opportunities for progress, etc… which is why it is one of the main challenges to solve in our society.

Figure 1: Difference between the richest and poorest countries against the availability of food, in where the color identifies a different region of the world, and the size of the globe is the number of children killed in these.

Figure 2: Difference between the richest and poorest countries in terms of food availability in 2013.

An animation of the change in the time of world hunger can be seen at the following link: https://bit.ly/33Sls0M

Proposal

Considering the problems described above, it is necessary to find new ways food production that requires few resources and produces great benefits nutritional and economic. A viable option that does not require a large amount of resources, is easy to produce, and contains great nutritional value is edible mushrooms, considering that neither tracts of land nor a large capital investment are required for their production, as well as taking advantage of agronomic waste. .

Since large-scale production is difficult to achieve in scarcity environments, it is proposes a design of small-scale crops that allows families or small communities obtain this food source. This objective would be achieved with cultivation units as shown in the following image.

Results

The proposal won first place in the UN Robot 2020 innovation competition.