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Mycelium, the vegetative growth of filamentous fungi, has attracted increasing commercial and academic interest in recent years due to its ability to upcycle agricultural and industrial wastes into low-cost, sustainable composite materials. However, mycelium composites typically exhibit foam-like mechanical properties, primarily originating from their weak organic filler constituents. Fungal growth can be alternatively utilised as a low-cost method for ondemand generation of natural nanofibrils, such as chitin and chitosan, which can be grown and isolated from liquid wastes and by-products in the form of fungal micro-filaments. This study characterised polymer extracts and nanopapers produced from a common mushroom reference and various species of fungal mycelium grown on the sugarcane by-product molasses. Polymer yields of ~10-26% were achieved, which is comparable to those of crustacean-derived chitin, and the nanopapers produced exhibited much higher tensile strengths than existing mycelium materials, with values of up to ~25 MPa (mycelium) and ~98 MPa (mushroom), in addition to useful hydrophobic surface properties resulting from the presence of organic lipid residues in the nanopapers. HCl or H 2 O 2 treatments were used to remove these impurities facilitating tuning of mechanical, thermal and surface properties of the nanopapers produced. This potentially enables their use in a wide range of applications including coatings, membranes, packaging and paper.

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