remotelove

Howdy y'all! I am diving extremely deep into mycology and am on a quest to catch up on all modern research on the subject. I recently discovered 21st Century Guidebook to Fungi (Free from the authors!! https://www.davidmoore.org.uk/21st_century_guidebook_to_fungi_platinum/) but I need MORE! I'll list out some conditions and wants to see if that gets me in the right direction.

• I am looking for fairly advanced books that are college level or higher.

• Diversity of authors and research is awesome. (Conflicting data between books is also not a problem as this is a "relatively new" field of study.)

• Detailed information about genetics, breeding, etc.. Information about different methods to breed and cross fungi would be a huge plus. (I am entering this hobby with a minimal understanding of genetics. I do understand that Mendel only scratched the surface on genetics with highly controlled studies about peas and his theories have a metric ton of caveats.)

• If anyone can recommend a good "bible" for mushroom identification, that would be great. I have one, but it is lacking. Any phone apps I have found are OK, but those are better supported with core knowledge first, me thinks. (Side note: I have been hearing rumors that identification of fungi may be slowly changing. While classification has typically been by fruit characteristics, that might not be the full story.)

• Aside from a focus on genetics and identification, what books have you found to be super interesting? (How to Change Your Mind or Fantastic Fungi would be examples of something in the "interesting" category and may only be slightly related to mushrooms.)

• What universities are on the forefront of research of fungi and psychedelics? UC Davis, UC Berkeley and a couple others have been releasing lectures and studies recently that are super interesting. (As a side-topic, I am enamored by the potential of psychedelics. While there is a great deal of spiritual self discovery to be had, I am super interested in the science behind it all.)

Thanks in advance for any information dump you can provide here!

For my conditions, it seems that 50/50 hardwood saw dust/wheat bran is performing better than standard masters mix. It's probably a hair too humid for it in my tent, but it's gotta be higher for the oysters that are fruiting now.

(That is a 5lb block of substrate)

There is a ton of anecdotal evidence on the interwebs about the photosensitivity of fungi, ie, it governs the direction of pin growth, fruit colors, etc. suggesting a circadian rhythm of sorts.

There are older papers out there that do document light sensitivity in the red/blue ranges. However, none that I found have actually documented chemical changes in the fruit itself, just the changes in the structure of the fruit. (If I remember correctly, it was around 100 species that have been documented as photosensitive to some degree.)

I personally have debunked monotub side pinning being caused by light. Compaction of the substrate and limiting moisture exposure to the sides of a mycelium cake has all but eliminated side pinning for me. I digress.

So, I am just looking for new studies and research papers on this subject. Eventually, I will probably conduct my own experiments, but that is for another day.

Cheers!

I had a bit of grain left during my last run, so I mixed the bits I had left.

This is interesting, actually. Over the next few months, I'll continue this experiment to see what grain mixes might work better for spawn.

While this wasn't a "proper" test, I had still hypothesized that the higher starch content in the popcorn would do better. I guess not.

I'll try and separate testing into different categories like starch content, moisture content, mycelium strain, etc. There is probably a ton more conditions to isolate as well.

I am doing research into setting up a mini farm for gourmet and medicinal mushrooms and am currently looking into long term mycelium storage.

On the surface, the answers seem simple: Once the mycelium runs out of nutrients, it dies. So mor food mor better? However..

Slants seem to be the #1 recommended long term storage method. However, the most economical types of slants I can get seem to hold about as much agar as your standard petri dish.

Questions that come to mind:

• Is the goal of a slant to reduce the propagation of mycelium to save on its nutrient supply?
• Is there a measurable difference in nutrient uptake between the different methods?
• Does it all just boil down to which method is more space efficient for storage?
• What questions do I really need to be asking myself in the context of this thread? ;)

Regardless, I think I will have to "update" or "refresh" my cultures every 12-18 months by transferring the mycelium to fresh media. Correct?

(Obviously, for substrate inoculation, the different methods have their own benefits which I am already aware of.)