Nutritional requirements for mycelial growth of three Lentinus species from the Philippines

Effect of Culture Media on the Yield and Protein Content of Pleurotus ostreatus (Jacq.) Kumm Mycelia

The development of alternative proteins derived from fungi-based sources is gaining recognition due to their health benefits and lower environmental impact, compared to traditional animal-based sources. In this study, we investigated the culture conditions for Pleurotus ostreatus mycelia, focusing on the nutritional requirements and yield optimization using solid surface culture and liquid-state culture methods. Our findings indicate that optimal culture conditions involve glucose as the primary carbon source, with an initial pH of 6.0. By the eighth day of the culture period, media formulated with amaranth seed flour and Bambara groundnut flour yielded the highest mycelial protein content, characterized by a compact filamentous network with fewer open pores. Additionally, urea supplementation at 0.01% concentration on amaranth seed-based nutrient medium significantly increased the protein content from 31.4% to 38.7% (dry weight basis). The research findings contribute to the development of fungal-based proteins, which are essential in the production of sustainable food products.

Design and build a green tent environment for growing and charactering mycelium growth in lab

Mycelium-based materials have seen a surge in popularity in the manufacturing industry in recent years. This study aims to build a lab-scale experimental facility to investigate mycelium growth under a well-controlled temperature and humidity environment and explore how substrates of very different chemical and mechanical properties can affect the microscopic morphology of the mycelium fibers during growth. Here, we design and build a customized green tent with good thermal and humidity insulation for controlling the temperature and humidity and monitor the environmental data with an Arduino chip. We develop our procedure to grow mycelium from spores to fibrous networks. It is shown that a hydrogel substrate with soluble nutrition is more favorite for mycelium growth than a hardwood board and leads to higher growing speed. We take many microscopic images of the mycelium fibers on the hardwood board and the hydrogel substrate and found no significant difference in diameter (∼3 μm). This research provides a foundation to explore the mechanism of mycelium growth and explore the environmentally friendly and time-efficient method of its growth.

A novel coconut-malt extract medium increases growth rate of morels in pure culture

Morels are gourmet wild edible mushrooms that can grow on several substrates with significant growth rate variations. Such variations have hindered the development of a standardized culture media to promote morel’s sustainable production. The aim of this study is developing a novel culture media that takes advantage of coconut water as a complementary component of culture media. Coconut water has been extensively used as a growth-promoting component for plant tissue cultures; however, its application as component of fungi cultivation medium has not been fully developed. This study confirms that coconut water can be efficiently used as culture media component for morels using a kinetic characterization. Morchella sp. kinetic growth is evaluated in different cultures: agar, malt extract agar (MEA), lactose, coconut water (15%) and combinations of them. Kinetic growth parameters (lag phase, λ and maximum specific growth rate, µ_max) are estimated using primary modeling methods. Among the selected models, the best fit is achieved using Baranyi’s model. A significant increase from 15.8% to 43.4% of the µ_max values was observed when culture media (agar, lactose, MEA) is supplemented with coconut water. The largest values of µ_max are obtained in MEA-coconut cultures (21.13 ± 0.43–22.57 ± 0.35). Micro-sclerotia and late sclerotia are observed in all cultures containing coconut water justifying the development of a feasible and cost-effective way of culturing morels. The results demonstrate that coconut water can be used for formulation of standard media for morel cultivation leading to a cheap alternative to produce dense mycelium and promote sclerotia formation.