Robert Beelman

General area of research interest involves development of cultural and postharvest practices for fruit, vegetable and mushrooms to improve their composition, quality, stability and safety of food products produced from them. Recent research has focused on development of methods to enhance the levels of important bioactive components of cultivated mushrooms in order to improve their nutritional/and or medicinal value. For example, commercially practical methods have been developed to enhance the levels of selenium, ergothioneine and ergocalciferol (Vit. D2) that can make mushrooms, or their products, as the best sources of these compounds in a plant-based diet.

Selenium levels can be increased to predictable levels by the addition of sodium selenite to the growth substrate via addition to commercially-produced compost supplements and the mushrooms incorporate the selenium into organic form, mostly into selenomethione. Selenium-enriched fresh mushrooms can be can be cultivated as an excellent dietary source of selenium or they can be enriched to very high levels that can be used as dietary supplements or food ingredients that can be employed to enrich other food products with selenomethione.