The button mushroom is one of the widely cultivated and consumed mushrooms throughout the world. The cultivation is done on a composted substrate on which a casing layer is applied. This casing layer plays due to its water-holding properties, the neutral pH level, and the porous character and essential part in the cultivation process. While a wide range of casing layers are known, usually peat moss is used. As increasing the nutritional quality of mushroom compost is a prime factor in increasing yield, many studies are done. It could be shown that adding protein-rich supplements at casing significantly stimulated mushroom yield, shorten the cultivation life-cycle, and caused colonization of the substrate compared with the non-supplemented control. The authors of today’s research paper evaluated the effect of ground corn and soybean seed as rich sources of protein and oil applied to the casing on production and quality of white button mushroom.

The cultivation of the almond mushroom (Agaricus subrufescens, also referred to as Agaricus blazei) usually follows that of the button mushroom (Agaricus bisporus). But as Stamets wrote, each mushroom species thrives on a limited range of substrates within their habitat requirements. Therefore, today’s research project investigated a better commercial cultivation process by using compost mixed with selected agro-residues. The authors used a one-year fermented horse manure compost. The compost was mixed with sawdust, woodchips, and corncob in different ratios.

Culture media play an essential role in the optimum mycelial growth of different fungal species. In the case of Cordyceps species, different types of media are used for isolation, identification, preservation, and in vitro culture, with less uniformity in medium composition and incubation period. Hence, it is of interest to study the growth characteristics of C. militaris in a range of nutritionally poor to rich agar media at different intervals of the incubation period. Therefore, today’s research paper analyzed 5 isolates from C. militaris and their growth on 22 different types of agar media. The incubation took place at 25°C and under light and dark conditions.

We already talked about a lot of different substrate combinations to increase the mushroom yield. But today’s research project went one step further. The authors combined one of the highest produced mushrooms with the second-highest production of an agricultural product. Adding this by-product to the substrate increased not only the yield, but it also helps to secure low-cost raw materials while at the same time reducing the agro-waste. The control substrate mixture was made from corncobs amended with rice bran, cottonseed hulls, wheat bran, sugar beet powder, soy pulp, and oyster shells. Lime was used to adjust the pH level. The authors then replaced the different amounts of the corncob with the agro-waste apple pomace.

Cordyceps militaris is widely used as a traditional medicinal mushroom due to various biological activities of the body. One of them cordycepin. But the amount of cordycepin produced per unit dry weight is reported to be very small. Since cultured C. militaris contains various components, it is necessary to perform many steps of purification. Thus, artificial cultivation at a solid-state has been studied for commercial use. However, mushrooms’ solid culture method has a disadvantage that it takes a long time to complete fruiting body development. Submerged mycelial culture could be an alternative solution to overcome the low productivity. Therefore, the main objective of today’s research project was to improve cordycepin production in submerged culture.

In today’s video, I will answer the question of s.c.specialties. He asked: “What are your thoughts on Cassava peelings?” I started searching for this topic and came across this paper. “Cultivation of oyster mushrooms on cassava waste.” The authors could show that by using cassava waste the right way, you could reach a biological efficiency of up to 102. How? Take your notepad, and let’s keep growing.

Cultivating Shiitake is usually done on either natural logs or synthetic logs usually made of sawdust. But can Shiitake also be grown on other substrates? Absolutely! How? Take your notepad, and let’s keep growing. Today’s research project evaluated the possibility of growing Shiitake mushrooms on sugarcane bagasse supplemented with different amounts of either rice bran or sugarcane molasse.

The shiitake mushroom is worldwide one of the most widely cultivated mushrooms. Starting with logs that date back to 1100 A.D. Today around 80% are grown on sawdust. Which raises the question of the best sawdust? Therefore, the authors of today’s research project tested 10 different types of sawdust to figure out how each of them affects growth and yield. They could show that by choosing the right sawdust, a biological efficiency of 102 is possible.

Oyster mushrooms are one of the easier mushrooms to cultivate. This is because the mushroom grows on a wide range of substrates and tolerates a broad range of cultivation parameters. But what can someone expect to achieve growing oyster mushrooms? To figure that out, we will today compare the results of 7 different research projects on the cultivation of Pleurotus ostreatus with each other. In doing so, we will look at different substrates and sterilization methods and analyze these two regarding time and biological efficiency. The fastest time was roughly 20 days. The highest BE was around 188. But how to get there?

In the last video, we studied together a research project which was done in India. In today’s video, we will go to Africa or, to be more specific to Ethiopia. The agriculture-based Ethiopian economy is highly dependent on Coffea arabica and releases a vast amount of coffee wastes. Despite the high diversity of wild edible mushrooms, very little of it is known. Thus, no mushroom cultivation practice can be found in Ethiopia to fill the demands of people interested in mushroom consumption. Therefore, the current study was initiated to assess the suitability of different locally available substrates for the cultivation of P. ostreatus. In doing so, the authors the highest BE with 77 using a mixture of local substrates and the lowest BE with 32 by using only one of the sources.

When it comes to the cultivation of mushrooms, not all substrates are available everywhere. This is due to the different climate conditions which favor different crop productions. While the US is leading when it comes to corn, sorghum, and soybean, India leads with rice, wheat, and sugarcane. As oyster mushrooms can grow on a wide range of substrates, today’s research paper investigated the effect of cotton stalks and cottonseed hulls on the growth and yield of Pleurotus ostreatus and Pleurotus florida. The goal was to provide the farmers in India with an alternative substrate source, which would give them an additional income besides utilizing stalks generated in the fields. By using different mixtures, the authors could show that growing oyster mushrooms on these substrates is possible.

If you want to grow successful mushrooms, a high-quality substrate is an essential requirement. But what should it contain? In today’s video, I will talk about a research project that focuses on this aspect regarding Agaricus mushroom cultivation, better known as the button mushroom. Ready? Take your notepad, and let’s keep growing. The authors aimed with their project on different nitrogen sources and tested four different types of them.

For every kilogram of mushrooms produced, there will be 5-6 kg of by-products. Around 12.74 million tons (MT) of mushrooms were consumed in 2018 worldwide. With this number, we will end up with 38.22 to 63.7 million tons of spent mushroom substrate each year. Which raises the question of what to do with it? Over one answer to this question, I will go over in today’s video. I will discuss a research project in which the authors investigated the use of spent mushroom substrate for the cultivation of oyster mushrooms. Were they successful? Absolutely. Take your notepad, and let’s keep growing.

Growing mushrooms starts with a good foundation – the substrate. What kind of substrate you should be using depends on the mushroom strain you want to cultivate because different substrates will influence the growth, development, and yield of your mushroom.

Choosing the wrong substrate will impact your mushroom yield. What parts of the substrate will have an impact is part of this video.

Shiitake (Lentinula edodes) is usually grown on sawdust or wood shavings. But this approach needs sterilization and aseptic conditions. The authors, therefore, investigated an alternative substrate.

Each mushroom species needs a different substrate mixture for optimum growth. For the cultivation of Pleurotus sajor-caju the authors analyzed, therefore, six different substrates mixed with three different spawn materials.

As we talk in earlier videos, not all substrates are available everywhere. But as mushrooms and especially oyster mushrooms grow on almost everything, then choosing a local alternative material is an excellent way to go. Today’s research project focuses, therefore, on the use of coffee husk for the cultivation of Pleurotus ostreatus.

Growing mushrooms starts with a good foundation – the substrate. What kind of substrate you should be using depends on the mushroom strain you want to cultivate because different substrates will influence the growth, development, and yield of your mushroom. In today’s video, I will present, therefore, a research project which investigated sawdust from 5 different trees.

On the search for the best tree for sawdust as a substrate, today’s research project investigated different trees. This project is similar to a previous video. In today’s research project the authors compared different types of sawdust from five different trees. Three of them are new.

Not all substrate is available everywhere; therefore, mushroom farmers have to use what is at their hand. One such possible substrate is banana leaves, and the question is, can you grow mushrooms on it? The same is true when it comes to sterilization methods. The authors of today’s research project compared, therefore, also, two different sterilization methods with each other. Be doing so, they achieved a biological efficiency of 120!

If you are growing mushrooms, then one challenge for you is to make the substrate that is available to you accessible for the mushroom you want to grow. In doing so, the goal is not only to grow mushrooms but to do it in the most efficient way. Here, the right mixture of the available substrates plays an important role. Therefore, the authors of today’s research project tested four different substrates and mixtures of them as well as two different supplements to improve the cultivation of Flammulina velutipes mushroom, also known as the golden needle mushroom.

Reading about the history of mushroom cultivation is one thing, but being alive and seeing history happening in real-time is a totally different experience. Here I am referring to the one side (history) on the development of shiitake cultivation from finding in nature over log cultivation to bag cultivation or the cultivation of Agaricus mushrooms. Today we can see the same happening with the cultivation of the Cordyceps fungus. Without going into the details, because you can read them in many books, Cordyceps is an entomopathogenic fungus that parasitizes larva or pupa of Lepidoptera insects and forms fruiting bodies on their insect hosts. These fruiting bodies were then harvested and used as part of the Chinese medicine as the fungus produces many bioactive compounds, here in particular Cordycepin. In recent years we learned to cultivate Cordyceps and especially Cordyceps militaris without using a living larva. But the process of synthesizing Cordycepin takes a lot of time, and it is difficult to achieve large scale production via solid-state fermentation. The use of submerged culture fermentation has the problem of higher costs and a higher risk of getting contaminated. Therefore, the authors of today’s research project investigated the effects of working volume, carbon sources, nitrogen sources, inorganic salts, growth factor, nucleoside analog, and amino acid additions to improve the Cordycepin production in larger volume (here 1,000 ml).

In 1990 the magnitude of fungal diversity, that is, the actual number of species worldwide were estimated to be at least 1.5 million species. In 2000, the number of known described species of fungi was estimated to be about 74,000. Of these, around 7,000 species are estimated to be edible. To date (2013), only 200 are experimentally grown, 100 economically cultivated, approximately 60 commercially cultivated, and about 10 have reached an industrial scale of production in many countries. The mushroom species, which is part of today’s video, falls somewhere between experimentally grown and commercially cultivated. If you want to go from experimental to commercial cultivation, it is necessary to understand all the required parameters. One of these parameters is the mycelium run rate – short MRR. The MRR depends on the medium on which it is cultivated. Therefore, the authors of today’s research paper investigated twelve solid media and their influence on the MRR of Lentinus cladopus Lév.

If you watched my last video, you know that there are only around 10 mushrooms grown on an industrial scale in many countries. One of them is Agaricus bisporus, commonly known as button mushroom or champignon mushroom, with a global market share in 2018 of roughly 39%. How big was the global market size back then? 12.74 million tons. Of which, around 5 million tons are only button mushrooms. How much is that? An Airbus A380, for example, weighs around 570 tons. Which means you need 8.772 A380 to match this number. Currently, only 263 of them are produced. But that is a different story. If you want to grow this many mushrooms, every step must be optimized. The growth and quality of the mycelium. The spawn rate. The substrate and the sterilization process of it. In the case of Agaricus bisporus, the right casing layer. The cultivation parameters like temperature and humidity. As I already addressed the sterilization process, I will, therefore, talk in today’s video about the mycelium growth rate. The authors of today’s research project investigated two different strains on five various culture media. Besides the culture media, the authors studied the influence of the pH value and the impact of the temperature on the mycelium run rate. The mycelium run rate is as you know the time it takes for the mycelium to fully colonize the substrate – here the petri dish. The mycelium run rate is measured either in days or mm per day. Here is the result …

Cultivating mycorrhizal mushrooms is not an easy task. The first step in finding out if it is feasible is to figure out the best conditions for mycelium growth. In doing so, you must test for the right pH value of the substrate, the substrate’s composition, which means what carbon source and nitrogen source works best, and the temperature under which the mycelium grows the fastest. The mushroom in question is Hydnum repandum known as sweet tooth, wood hedgehog, or hedgehog mushroom as the mushroom has a sweet, nutty taste and a crunchy texture. The authors of today’s research project investigated, therefore, the pH value in the range of 4 to 6.5 in 0.5 increments while at the same time varying the temperature from 15°C to 30°C in 5°C steps. They tested seven different compounds for the carbon source, and for the nitrogen source, six different compounds.

Oyster mushrooms are one of the most cultivated mushrooms worldwide. Of this species, the most popular one is Pleurotus ostreatus, a species that can grow on a wide range of agriculture wastes. Pleurotus ostreatus is a white-rot fungus that uses lignin and cellulose together as a carbon source and turns the host into white. Therefore, any type of organic matter containing lignin and cellulose can be used for the cultivation of Pleurotus ostreatus. The authors of today’s research project investigated; therefore, the cultivation of Pleurotus ostreatus grown on waste paper, which was amended with wheat bran ratio 2:1 and 0.57% calcium carbonate. The wastepaper was soaked overnight and boiled for 5-10 minutes. The authors used a spawn rate of 1%. The cultivation parameters were 22-25°C and 80-85% relative humidity. The authors tested the impact of the substrate’s pH value and the influence of the water frequency.

Various parameters affect the growth and performance of mushrooms, including substrate source, substrate quality, spawn, strain, supplements, and cultivation parameter. It was reported that high protein content is effective in shortening growth period, while high nitrogen content is an obstacle. Therefore, the authors of today’s research project tested three different substrates amended with four different supplements to measure the influence of the carbon and nitrogen source on the growth of Pleurotus ostreatus and Pleurotus florida. The tested substrates were wheat straw, corn stem residue (in the article declared as maize), barley straw and lawn cut. For the supplementation, the authors used wheat bran, rice bran and soybean powder. The substrates were first soaked in water for 1.5 hours and then boiled at 100°C for 1,5 hours. The supplements were sterilized at 121°C for 1 hour and added 10% to the substrate. Spawn was added at a rate of 16% dry weight to the substrate. Here is the side by side comparison of the two mushrooms.