What follows is the technology, described generically: how a white-rot fungus opens lignin, and what is left behind when it has. It is not a record of anything this project has done. Nothing below has been tested here.
Twenty-four stops on one path, from cut residue to a feed trough. Click a stop; where a transition has a clip, it plays and lands on the next frame, and the labels appear once the picture is still.
Raw residue
Wood is not one material. It is cellulose and hemicellulose — sugar chains, digestible — wrapped in lignin, which is not a sugar chain at all. Lignin is an irregular aromatic polymer built by radical coupling, with no repeating bond for an enzyme to cleave. That irregularity is the point: it is a chemical defence, and it is why almost nothing digests wood.
White-rot fungi are the principal organisms that break it. They do not digest lignin the way a gut digests food. They secrete extracellular oxidative enzymes — lignin peroxidase, manganese peroxidase, versatile peroxidase and laccase — which generate free radicals that attack the polymer from the outside, non-specifically. The fungus dismantles the lock without ever taking it inside itself.
Two consequences matter. The fungus is not fed by the lignin: breakdown is largely co-metabolic, and the mushroom is built from the sugar fraction. And what is left behind has changed — substrate that has been through a colonisation and fruiting cycle has had its lignin shield partially removed, which makes the remaining carbohydrate accessible to a ruminant in a way the original woody material was not. That second point is the entire basis for spent substrate as a feed input. It is a claim about chemistry.
The commercial boundary runs along the invasive/endemic line. Invasive biomass may be valorized by a separate company. Endemic propagation is GHRI's alone and carries a binding no-commercialisation commitment.
GHRI removes invasive biomass and would transfer it. A separate company would process it; GHRI would not operate that company. Revenue from biovalorization will support GHRI's restoration work. Removal targets are set by the restoration plan and by the regulator, not by processor demand.
Permit application in process. The Galápagos Biosecurity Agency (ABG) is developing the specific technical procedure applicable to non-plant organisms. Once published in the Registro Oficial, the Pest Risk Analysis will be submitted for technical evaluation. No import or cultivation authorisation has been issued.
En trámite de permiso. La Agencia de Bioseguridad para Galápagos (ABG) se encuentra desarrollando el procedimiento técnico específico aplicable a organismos que no son plantas. Una vez publicado en el Registro Oficial, se presentará el Análisis de Riesgo de Plagas para su evaluación técnica. No se ha emitido autorización alguna de importación ni de cultivo.