Fani Goltsios

Fani is a PhD student at Teagasc, Ashtown and the University of College Dublin. Fani’s research focuses on identifying the food safety risks of using peat-alternative growth media in food production and assessing the quality and safety that is crucial to ensure sustainability and commercial viability of crop productivity.

Peat is commonly used as a top layer, known as casing, for mushroom production. However, extracting ecologically important peat from peatland habitats can harm biodiversity and release greenhouse gases, creating growing pressure to find suitable alternatives. The project is centered around assessing the bacterial community composition of reduced peat casing alternatives for mushroom production, and to examine the impact of the casing composition on Listeria monocytogenes survival potential. The expected benefits of peat-alternative research can help us assess and understand any potential food safety risks associated with the use of alternative substrates and provide data that is crucial for evidence-based food safety assurance in horticultural production.

Fani completed her M.Sc. in Microbial Ecology at the University of Guelph, Canada. During her degree, Fani researched and investigated bacterial and yeast endophytes isolated from big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi) and assessed endophyte potential to improve plant yield.