ABSTRACT Global health concerns and the increasing demand for nourishment have collectively driven the rising demand for functional foods. Mushrooms, possessing unique flavor and considerable edible and medicinal value, are high‐quality and sustainable bioresources for functional foods. Patent documents contain extensive information, which facilitates revealing technology development trends, exploring innovative breakthroughs, and providing direction for subsequent research. However, the geographical patterns and driving factors underlying mushroom‐derived functional foods (MDFF) remain largely unknown at a global scale. Here, a total of 17,322 patents related to “mushroom and functional food” between 2005 and 2025 were acquired from the Lens patent database and analyzed to comprehensively understand the developmental status of MDFF. We examined the general data (time distribution, countries or regions, inventors and owners, and technology category) and further dug the specific information (co‐occurrence analysis of key terms). The category distribution and co‐occurrence analysis of titles and keywords demonstrated that food ingredients, product production and processing, functional activity research, molecular mechanism analysis, and strain improvement may be research and development hotspots. Importantly, this study demonstrates the broad applications of artificial intelligence in identifying mushrooms, exploring functional active ingredients of mushrooms, and producing MDFF, thereby supporting a more cost‐effective and reliable development of MDFF.
Zhao et al. (Wed,) studied this question.