Mushrooms can help resolve our waste disposal problems. Why are we ignoring them?

So I'm sat in an LGA EEHT Board meeting (don't ask) and the matter under discussion is waste management. You know about this stuff as it has been all over the telly - bans on straws, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, those pesky Chinese saying they won't take our rubbish any more, and hand-wringing greens tutting about our sinful consumer lifestyles. We're listening to a report about technology, waste streams and something called the "circular economy". I have to tell you it isn't gripping but that, since we're all councillors, the matter of collecting, recycling and disposing of the rubbish we all produce is a core part of what we do - local councils empty the bins.

Funny thing is that all I could think of was mushrooms. And I regret not raising the subject at the meeting since, as you all should know, fungi contain the salvation for our planet including dealing with pollution:

Certain species, such as the oyster mushroom, produce enzymes that digest the hydrocarbons in petroleum. Some can absorb heavy metals like mercury and even digest polyurethane plastics. Scientists are also experimenting to see if certain types of fungi might be able to absorb radiation after nuclear disasters.

Yet in all the meetings, the reports, the debates on waste the matter of mushrooms never arises. I wonder why?

...cultivating the right type of mushroom on soiled nappies can break down 90% of the material they are made of within two months. Within four, they are degraded completely. What is more, she says, despite their unsavoury diet the fungi in question, Pleurotus ostreatus (better known as oyster mushrooms), are safe to eat. To prove the point she has, indeed, eaten them.

Fungi Mutarium is a prototype that grows edible fungal biomass, mainly the mycelium, as a novel food product. Fungi is cultivated on specifically designed agar shapes that the designers called "FU". Agar is a seaweed based gelatin substitute and acts, mixed with starch and sugar, as a nutrient base for the fungi. The "FUs" are filled with plastics. The fungi is then inserted, it digests the plastic and overgrows the whole substrate. The shape of the "FU" is designed so that it holds the plastic and to offer the fungi a lot of surface to grow on.

Several organisms demonstrated the ability to efficiently degrade PUR (synthetic polymer polyester polyurethane) in both solid and liquid suspensions. Particularly robust activity was observed among several isolates in the genus Pestalotiopsis, although it was not a universal feature of this genus. Two Pestalotiopsis microspora isolates were uniquely able to grow on PUR as the sole carbon source under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions.

By feeding agricultural waste to Mycelium (the webs of thread-like mushroom roots) under correct conditions, the waste is turned into a material that can be moulded into any shape, having similar properties to Styrofoam – a polymer-based material made from Polystyrene.

Mushrooms can be used to clean up oil spills, accelerate landfill decomposition, as a structural base for lightweight panels, and as a means to extract rare minerals from trash. Yet there seems to be little or no significant research into the commercialisation of these systems. I may be that they don't scale up but I suspect that waste managers - including councils - don't want to be the first to say "we're going to grow oyster mushrooms on our landfill" because they're worried everyone would point and laugh.

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Friday Fungus: Mushrooms in Space!

So you've escaped the bounds of Earth and, like Major Tom, are orbiting in your snug space station. The atmosphere is clear and clean, free from asthma triggering, infecting fungus - space is pure!

Ha! Think again:

One mission of the Microbial Observatory Experiments on the International Space Station is to examine the traits and diversity of fungal isolates, to gain a better understanding of how fungi may adapt to microgravity environments and how this may affect interactions with humans in closed habitats. In the new study, led by Benjamin Knox, a microbiology graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, scientists compared two isolates of A. fumigatus that were isolated from the International Space Station to reference isolates from earth.

Through in vitro, in vivo, and genetic analyses, the researchers discovered that the isolates recovered from the space station exhibited normal in vitro growth and chemical stress tolerance, and there were no unexpected genetic differences. The strains in space were slightly more lethal in a vertebrate model of invasive disease, but there was nothing to suggest that as a consequence of spending time in space, there were any significant changes to the fungus.

Yes folks - it's not just that we're squatting on planet fungus but, when we leave for the stars we'll take those mushrooms with us!

Relax though - there's hallucinogenic lichen!

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Friday Fungus: On fungal economics - yeast or mushroom?

Or rather fungal metaphors in economics:

Arnold Harberger offered a nice metaphor thinking about this difference in his Presidential Address to the American Economic Association back in 1998, entitled "A Vision of the Growth Process" and published in the March 1998 issue of the American Economic Review. Harberger discusses whether economic growth is more likely to be like "mushrooms," in the sense that certain parts of a growing economy will take off much faster than others, or more like "yeast," in the sense that economy overall expands fairly smoothly overall. He argues that "mushroom"-type growth is more common.

Of course both yeast and mushrooms are fungus but the metaphor in question is made better still if we understand what's happening in the two processes. Harberger sees only the fruiting heads of the mushrooms - the visible manifestation of a symbiotic growing system:

Mycorrhizal partnerships are symbiotic, or mutually beneficial, relationships between plants and fungi, which take place around the plant's roots. While there are many species of fungus which do not form these partnerships, the vast majority of land plants have mycorrhizas (from the Greek mykes: fungus and rhiza: root), and many plants could not survive without them. Fossil records show that roots evolved alongside fungal partners and that fungi may have been crucial in helping plants evolve to colonise the land, hundreds of millions of years ago.

Broadly speaking, there are two main kinds of mycorrhiza: Arbuscular mycorrhizas penetrate the cells of their host's roots, and most plants develop this type. Ectomycorrhizas surround the roots without penetrating them. Trees may form either type, and some form both. In each case there is cell-to-cell contact between the plant and the fungus, allowing nutrient transfer to take place.

So not only is Harberger's view of growth correct - it's unpredictable in its location, mushroom-like - but when we look closer he has a fascinating metaphor for the way in which that unpredictable growth affects the wider economy (extending mycorrhizas) and the society that economy feeds (the tree symbiote of the mushroom).

The yeast analogy, on the other hand, is a managed, planned and controlled system. That yeast converts the sugars in the dough into carbon dioxide and alcohol making the bread rise (and rise again as we bake off the alcohol). When it's baked the yeast is dead and we must start again if we want more bread. There is no beneficial system - everything is the result of external intervention.

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Friday Fungus: council estate mushrooms

The Lismore Circus Estate at Gospel Oak in Camden isn't the most obvious location for a new horticultural enterprise. This - described as "(l)ong sleek apartment blocks (Ludham and Waxham) designed by the firm of Frederick McManus and Partners as part of the Lismore Circus estate" - is the location:



In the basement of this block developers are, however, proposing just such a horticultural enterprise - a mushroom farm:

London could become home to a new mushroom farm capable of growing three quarters of a ton every month using waste materials such as coffee grounds.

Eco start-up Article No. 25 wants to set up the farm in the basement of a block of Seventies council flats in Gospel Oak, and Camden council is considering a planning application.

The mushrooms would grow on a form of compost made from waste materials including coffee grounds and newspapers mixed with straw.

Two important points to make here - firstly this is a great use of essentially redundant space (the unused garages in the image) and secondly it opens up new uses for food waste.

Plus, of course, mushrooms are nutricious and flavoursome!

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Friday Fungus: Your mushroom masters demand worship

And who wouldn't worship something so splendid!

...and you never know they just might provide you with some lottery numbers:

Phra Sirimangkharo is raking in a nice little earner in return visitors donating to his swelling coffers. He said that the fungus – a huge black and white thing that grew on a log outside the monks’ quarters – is believed to be magical. Apparently prayers to the fungus got the 684 number on September 1st. There were many winners in the locality who gave part of their lucky haul back to the temple as a merit payment.

Now they are waiting with baited breath to see if the latest numbers come up again for the next drawing on Saturday. The numbers are 326, 42.

I'm guessing that this is as good a way as any for choosing lottery numbers. Either that or this great lump of bracket fungus really does have magic powers!
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Friday Fungus: Meeting the farming insects...

Ambrosia beetle farms (which you don't really want on your fig tree)

There are several insects that have, over the millenia, developed the intensive farming of fungus. And it all makes for a fascinating story:

Skinny lines of ants snake through the rainforest carrying leaves and flowers above their heads--fertilizer for industrial-scale, underground fungus farms. Soon after the dinosaur extinctions 60 million years ago, the ancestors of leaf-cutter ants swapped a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for a bucolic existence on small-scale subsistence farms. A new study at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama revealed that living relatives of these earliest fungus-farming ants still have not domesticated their crop, a challenge also faced by early human farmers.

All of which suggests that said insects aren't really all that hot at this farming lark (although by 'non-domesticated' we don't really mean wild but rather that the ants still have the fngal equivalent of crab apples despite that 60 million years of farming said mushrooms). Hence:

"We found that the selfish interests of more primitive ancestors of leaf-cutting ants are still not in line with the selfish interests of their fungal partner, so complete domestication hasn't really happened yet."

That being said, the leaf-cutter ants have a complex and sophisticated farming system that acts to minimise the production of fruiting heads (mushrooms to you and I) in favour of producing more of the hyphae that the ants actually eat.

So can we learn anything from these insect farmers? In some ways we can although mostly by reinforcing the value of long-established faming and crop management techniques. Here's some European research into ambrosia beetles:

Initial observations suggest ambrosia beetles plant different fungus varieties in a specific order, similar to crop rotation strategies employed by human farmers. They also utilize bacteria to promote the growth of their fungal crops and to combat pathogens.

"It was also really surprising to find out that in the fruit-tree pinhole borer, the ambrosia beetle species that I mainly study, the major fungus crop consists of a single strain that can be found across the whole of Europe," said Biedermann. "Humans also grow a few very successful cultivars of their crops."

These beetles lug around the spores for the fungus, caputure and use bacteria that kill off damaging pathogens and are careful to protect the interest of their farming environment, the host tree. This last point is perhaps a lesson to us humans in that the beetles that make their homes on living trees don't crop fungus:

'Another fascinating result was that fungi are only found in beetles that colonise dead trees. Beetles that dwell in trees that are still alive do not carry fungi as they would probably kill their host tree.’

The beetles also make use of endophytes - microorganisms that live in plant tissue and repel herbivores - to protect their gardens. And in a fun way the beetles experiment with naturally occurring anti-biotics to further protect and enhance their gardens.

We've barely scratched the surface of what we can learn from insects and the things we can extract from the bizarre world of fungi.

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Friday Fungus: Squatting on Planet Mushroom

Us humans think the planet we live on is ours. A plaything gifted to us by gods filled with good things for us to use. We've colonised much of Earth, built great cities, roads, walls, canals - the world is shaped by humanity. We dominate. Or that's what we believe.

Think again. We're squatters on Planet Mushroom:

Fungi are present almost everywhere, in a spectacular array of shapes, sizes and colours, and performing a wide variety of different activities. In 1991 David Hawksworth, a mycologist at Kew estimated the world's fungal diversity at 1.5 million species (equal to the estimated number of all known other living organisms). This was thought at the time to be a radical over estimate, but now other researchers have proposed figures in excess of 13 million. Fungi perform essential roles in every terrestrial, and many aquatic, ecosystems, eg. decomposing dead organic matter to release nutrients, supporting plant life on poor soils by improving the absorption of nutrients when they form mycorrhizal associations with roots, living inside plants as endophytes and forming symbiotic partnerships with algae to form lichens. Any deterioration in fungal populations and diversity can therefore have a considerable impact on ecosystem health, in fact, the loss of lichens from an area is often used as an indication of poor air quality.

We wouldn't be here - there'd be no life - if it weren't for fungi. Plants and animals depend on fungi - without mycorrhizal symbiosis many of our tree species would die. The forests, the grass steppes and even our gardens are grown atop a network of mycelium. The grandest example of this mushroom world is Oregon's honey mushroom:

Next time you purchase white button mushrooms at the grocery store, just remember, they may be cute and bite-size but they have a relative out west that occupies some 2,384 acres (965 hectares) of soil in Oregon's Blue Mountains. Put another way, this humongous fungus would encompass 1,665 football fields, or nearly four square miles (10 square kilometers) of turf.

The discovery of this giant Armillaria ostoyae in 1998 heralded a new record holder for the title of the world's largest known organism, believed by most to be the 110-foot- (33.5-meter-) long, 200-ton blue whale. Based on its current growth rate, the fungus is estimated to be 2,400 years old but could be as ancient as 8,650 years, which would earn it a place among the oldest living organisms as well.

We have a pretty negative relationship with our mushroom masters - they cause disease, they rot things, they poison us and are a symbol of dark, unpleasant places. If you set a google alert for fungi, you'll get a pile of stories about fungal infections complete with gory detail and hard-to-look-at pictures. Plus stories about how bats, frogs and bananas are heading for extinction - destroyed by fungi.

But then without fungi there's no bread and no beer, no blue cheese and your salami rots. Wherever we look, inside and outside, there are members of the fungal kingdom - molds, lichens, yeasts and mushrooms. They are the dominant and most significant lifeform on the planet, they clean stuff up, cure illness and keep plants alive. They even help store carbon:

"Natural fluxes of carbon between the land and atmosphere are enormous and play a crucial role in regulating the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and, in turn, Earth's climate," said Colin Averill, lead author on the study and graduate student in the College of Natural Sciences at UT Austin. "This analysis clearly establishes that the different types of symbiotic fungi that colonize plant roots exert major control on the global carbon cycle, which has not been fully appreciated or demonstrated until now."

We truly are living in a world filled with fungi yet we know so little about them and treat the presence of this great kingdom as something to be fought against rather than something to be understood. Sadly there are no undergraduate courses in mycology and precious few postgraduate courses (mostly medical mycology - pretty damned important given the issues with antibiotics). With the result that we're literally running out of mycologists.

Here we are squatting on Planet Mushroom and we know next to nothing about our kindly hosts!

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Mushroom wars, Nepalese style.

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This sort of thing:

A villager was shot dead in Nepal and three others were injured in clashes over a rare and valuable fungus coveted for its reputed aphrodisiac qualities, an official said.

Mugu district chief Keshab Raj Sharma said a gang of 10 to 12 looters was shooting "indiscriminately" on Wednesday night, and added that locals claimed the gang had stolen their harvest.

But when the mushroom in question sells for up to $78,000 per pound....

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Public health warnings as social engineering - the case of 'Himalayan Viagra'

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The Chinese government public health authorities have issues warnings about the safety of cordyceps sinensis (better known across Asia by its traditional Tibetan name, yartsa gunbu, which literally translates as "summer grass, winter worm).

...a handful of noted research scientists wonder why there’s been such little scrutiny of the research backing a public health warning from China’s State Food and Drug Administration (CFDA). Citing unsafe levels of cancer-causing arsenic in the fungus, the February 2016 announcement triggered a moratorium on pilot programs designed to expand the organism’s commercial development and distribution.

Connoisseurs of public health research with see a familiar litany of bad science in these announcements - selective research, ignoring studies that challenge the official position and a barrage of popular publicity directed at the offending product. And some suggest the reason for the government's concern is political, more about social engineering than public health. Gathering yartsa gunbu - 'Himalayan Viagra' - is a lucrative business:

According to one yartsa gunbu dealer who asked to remain anonymous, a family with good harvesters stand to make as much as 1,000,000 yuan (about $150,000) within the two month harvest window.

A lucrative business entirely controlled by ethnic Tibetans. And the Chinese government might prefer these people not to control a $1billion business selling weird fungus products to gullible Chinese consumers. So long as Tibetan families with the knowledge of where and how to gather yartsa gunbu are able to live in traditional communities rather than the government's preferred urban environment some suggest there will remain a call for independence.

Or else it could just be another example of a few studies providing the justification for out of control health authorities to ban, limit, control and regulate. The good news it that, so far it ain't working:

Whether any political motivations are driving the Chinese government’s claim to public health concerns about the fungus is yet to be seen. But Professor Tsim, who continues evaluating soil samples, says any regulatory action on the fungus inevitably affects the livelihood of Tibetans. The CFDA announcement has yet to impact Hong Kong prices, he said, and one eBay seller recently posted the fungus for about $78,000 per pound.

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Friday Fungus: wild mushrooms and the tragedy of the commons

You've got dressed up, hired a cab and are safely seated in that special restaurant for your special occasion. Scanning down the menu your eyes fall on a "mosaic of chicken, wild mushrooms and pistachio nuts - an elegant combination of woody, autumnal flavours packed into a chunky terrine". If you're me, you leap as the prospect of wild mushrooms and place the order for your starter. What you don't do is ask how those wild mushrooms arrived at a posh restaurant in Ilkley. Perhaps it's time to start asking - for the sake of our woodlands and for the sake of us continuing to enjoy the fabulous flavours of those wild mushrooms blessing our palettes.

We're familiar with the tragedy of the commons (although it is often misrepresented):

...each human exploiter of the common was guided by self-interest. At the point when the carrying capacity of the commons was fully reached, a herdsman might ask himself, “Should I add another animal to my herd?” Because the herdsman owned his animals, the gain of so doing would come solely to him. But the loss incurred by overloading the pasture would be “commonized” among all the herdsmen. Because the privatized gain would exceed his share of the commonized loss, a self-seeking herdsman would add another animal to his herd. And another. And reasoning in the same way, so would all the other herdsmen. Ultimately, the common property would be ruined.

So it is with wild foraging for mushrooms.

The New Forest Association (NFA) says there's growing anger over "commercial gangs" invading and filching fungi to flog to posh hotels and restaurants in back-door deals.

Experts have warned the gangs could even kill because pickers who don't know the different species are likely to take deadly toadstools and other poisonous fungi in mistake for edible and safe mushrooms.

Forestry Commission bosses have now vowed to "disrupt" commercial pickers plundering this autumn's crop - but campaigners are demanding an outright ban.

This same story is repeated across our woodlands - from Epping Forest to Ogden Water you'll see evidence of large scale mushroom gathering. How else did you think all those wild mushrooms arrived in all those restaurants? And the easy result of authorities is to introduce a ban:

Authorities in London's Epping Forest have been stopping and searching walkers in an attempt to catch foragers who are stripping the woodland of fungi.

Forest keepers are trying to crack down on the harmful practice after gangs of foragers descended on the woodland in vans to cart away hauls of mushrooms which are then sold to restaurants.

The plants can fetch up to £50 per kilo as the trend for foraged food in upmarket restaurants in London and around the country has sent demand soaring.

The problem is that, as we know too well, a ban would simply drive up the price and make it worth the while to carry on foraging (the downside risk is probably pretty small). Even if we banned restaurants from selling wild mushrooms - imagine the foodie cries of pain - there's still be a market at the restaurant backdoor at an even higher price.

Instead of banning foraging would it not be more sensible (and lucrative) for places like Epping Forest and the New Forest to auction off the rights to crop the mushrooms? Trust me, if you've forked out thousands of quid for something you'll be making really sure people don't arrive and steal it from you. The owners of the rights would back up the local keepers and wardens to stop the poaching of fungi - we'd have an industry interested in a sustainable product rather than a collection of uncontrolled exploiters of common rights.

Despite this, I'll bet you that the choices of authorities will be the ban not the licence.
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Friday Fungus: It had to happen! Welcome to mushroom chocolate!

I am grateful to Julia for bringing this to my attention:

Our aim has always been to develop high quality medicinal mushroom products that improve your health and wellbeing. Not only that, but we want to make it a tasty experience too. That's why our chocolates are the perfect excuse to enjoy raw chocolate whilst getting all the healing benefits of mushrooms. 

The full chocolate range - seven flavours is available at Harrods. Where else!

The firm in question is Hifas da Terra who are a splendidly batty (but super-scientific) Spanish company:

The Hifas da Terra project comes from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC ) where Catalina Fernández de Ana Portela, biologist and founder of the company, began to develop an initiative to grow saprophytic fungi on wood logs. After several years of business coaching and scientific studies at the forestry reasearch center ”Lourizán”, Hifas da Terra was created in 1999. A biotechnology company focused on mycology, trying to bring the knowledge of the beneficial properties of mushrooms to the people.

The firm retails mushroom kits, creams, soaps and health spa treatments, assorted gourmet products (including mushrooms in honey - not to be confused with honey mushrooms), food supplements and gifts, including a range of stylish clutch bags:

Brilliant!

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Friday Fungus - why fungi are so important

Stinkhorn

It's probably true that we wouldn't be here were in not for fungi - it was the mushroom brotherhood that first colonised the land helping to pave the way for plants, insects and eventually us higher order animals. OK it was a long time ago but fungi remain central to our life on the planet. And death:

“For most people, fungal disease means a bit of athlete’s foot or a manky-looking toe nail. These maybe irritating and unsightly but fungi can do far worse. Fungi kill more people than malaria and tuberculosis worldwide.  They destroy about a third of all arable food crops. Some species have led to the extinction of many animal and plant species – sometimes even before the species has even been discovered. Fungi were on the earth long before plants and other life forms. They readily adapt to increasing globalization and climate change and we need to rise to the challenge to deal with the threats posed by these versatile and intriguing organisms.”

That's Professor Rosemary Barnes from Cardiff University's Institute of Infection and Immunity and is a specialist in fungal infections. She also points out that the bad fungi are a very small part of the total fungal world - just 600 out of two million known species are disease-causing with just 30 causing 99% of these diseases. Plus, of course, fungi are saving lives as well:

Antimicrobial resistant (AMR) bacteria pose a very real threat to the world, one that a highly concerned World Health Organization (WHO) has kept in its radar for years. Now a team of researchers has identified a new natural antibiotic in horse dung-dwelling fungus, offering up secrets that might help us avoid or at least understand an encroaching AMR world crisis.

Those clever fungi have worked out how to adapt rapidly as the bacteria adapt and change. And this flexibility can be synthesised in the laboratory - taking us a step towards having adaptive, responsive antibiotics rather than the dead end (and also fungal in origin) drugs we know are such a problem.

Maybe we need more mycologists?

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Friday Fungus: the economics of Himalayan mushroom foraging

The Yartsa Gunbu (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) is a weird little fungus that infests a species of Chinese caterpillar eventually growing out from the head of the creature. It is cherished in Chinese medicine and, if you're writing tabloid headlines, the term 'Chinese viagra' is recommended.

The problem is that, as China has got richer, these prized traditional medicines have got ever more prized and ever more expensive. And the Yartsa Gunbu isn't farmed but foraged - this is hunter gathering. So it presents a problem - as Tim Worstall (slightly polemically) puts it:

There are those out there who think that we should return rather to our hunter gatherer roots. Simply pick from nature’s bounty rather than intensively farm the planet. There’s really only one problem with this delightful idea: we’d all starve within months having stripped the Earth of everything edible

Indeed this is very much an issue with Yartsa Gunbu especially given how important it has become for the economy of part of Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet:

With an eight-fold increase in value from ¥4,800 to ¥40,000 per pound (Winkler 2008b: 18) yartsa gunbu has become the mainstay of household economies across the Tibetan Plateau and in the highlands of Nepal, India, and Bhutan. It fills an economic void in Tibetan areas of China that state-sponsored development projects, which tend to focus on infrastructure, do not always satisfy.

So it's no surprise that there are reports of violence, extortion and criminal activity linked to the collection of this valuable product. Plus suggestions that the high prices lead to over-exploitation and the destruction of future production. So it is interesting to see how different communities have responded to this situation and to the threat of over-exploitation. In some areas the Yartsa Gunbu is found on land that is in existing private (or local village) ownership and, as a result the harvest is leased out by the land owner who secure the income in rent rather than by selling the fungus. Elsewhere a controlled number of permits are issued to outsiders and they are limited to specific locations.

However, Geoff Childs and Namgyal Choedup in an article in Himalaya report on two areas that use a different regulatory method to control the exploitation of the Yartsa Gunbu:

Using data from household surveys and in-depth interviews, the authors describe the process of gathering and selling yartsa gunbu within the parameters of management practices that combine religious and secular regulations over natural resources. The authors conclude with a discussion of the indigenous management system in relation to sustainable development.

The review concludes that regulation limiting collection is essential - what different communities have done is limit who can collect and when they can collect. Some, such as the places studied by Childs & Choedup, use traditional controls (religious tradition, inherited collection rights and regulation of collector behaviour) whereas others use more 'modern' approaches such as licensing, permits and leases to limit collection and provide incentives to protect the long-term supply.

The lesson of this is that, for all our modern urban idolising of wild foraging, this practice is pretty bad news for the environment if it is not controlled. As we see with UK demand for wild mushrooms (all that soup and pasta in all those gastro-pubs) and other foraged goods, the result is a problem:

Epping Forest, an ancient woodland straddling the border of greater London and Essex, is one of the best fungi sites in the country, with over 1,600 different species. But, like other fungi-rich sites such as the New Forest, it is being stripped out by illegal picking by gangs believed to sell the wild mushrooms to restaurants and markets

Perhaps rather than - as has happened in Epping Forest - simply banning foraging, we should pay a visit to Nepal and look at how they manage their harvest of an (admittedly pretty odd) wild mushroom.

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...of Mushrooms and Monsanto

Monsanto are, to some, the agents of evil, devils incarnate who wish either to destroy the planet with their 'frankenfoods' or exploiting the poor with their seed patents. However, they also conduct some of the research that means we'll be able to feed the 9 billion humans littering the planet by 2050. And here's one of the ways they'll be doing that - with mushrooms:

"For 20 years or more, the multinationals like Monsanto have been talking about producing plants that are resistant to temperature, drought and salt by genetic modification," Rodriguez said. "They have had limited success."

But Monsanto late 2013 announced a $US300 million ($A324.59 million) "BioAg Alliance" with Novozymes of Denmark to focus on microbial products, including fungi and bacteria, for increasing crop yields.

Griffith said Monsanto will test microbial strains in more than a half-million plots in 2015 and that number will expand exponentially.

"These things have been around for millennia," Griffith said. "Our science is finally catching up. There are billions of microbes in a teaspoon of soil. But how do you know which ones are beneficial and serve a specific purpose? With our BioAg Alliance we're trying to make good decisions based on DNA in the lab to identify which product candidates we can get out in the field."

This is a big switch for agribusiness moving us away from genetic modification (Monsanto have not been able to get this to work in creating the drought resistance that may be needed to respond to climate change). Instead we're looking at that ancient partnership between fungi and plants, the partnership that some think was an important factor in allowing plants to migrate from sea to land.

Over our history the development of agriculture - the industrial process we use to feed ourselves - has been closely linked to economic interests and commerce. It's great to see that, just as with other major advances in feeding the world, Monsanto and other science-based businesses continue to contribute new and better products that help meet our need for good, cheap food.

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'Of Mycelium and Men' - thoughts on the evolution of fungi...

Steve Manthorp wanted me to call this 'Of Mycelium and Men' and it's such a good title I have shamelessly thieved the idea. The posting is prompted by two things - the announcement of a project to study the evolutionary history of fungi by the US National Science Foundation and my recent reading of Jeff Vandermeer's 'City of Saints and Madmen'.

The research project first - it looks at zygomycetes which are believed to be among the first terrestrial fungi forms and perhaps a critical factor in the development of land plants. Zygomycetes are filamentous molds similar to those we see sometimes on old bread or fruit that is starting to rot. Anyhow, we don't know much about them - Jason Stajich, an associate professor of plant pathology and microbiology at the University of California, Riverside, explains:

"Despite zygomycetes' critical ecological roles and importance to human civilization, they remain understudied and their evolutionary relationships are still not well understood," Stajich said. "This is likely a result of some of the difficulty in culturing many of the species, but also because, in general, too few researchers have been studying them."

The research will examine the symbiotic and parasitic relationships between these early forms of fungi and the plants and animals on which they host - and hosted. And it's here that the 'City of Saints and Madmen' came to mind. the book - a collection of short stories set in a fictional city called Ambergris - has at its heart the uneasy relationship between man and mushrooms. The city is a human settlement placed in the heart of an older, grander and more complex city built by super-evolved mushroom-like humanoids, the 'Grey Caps'.

Perhaps, by design or accident, Vandermeer hit on a strange truth - fungi are an overlooked essence in the development of sophisticated life but we see the myco-world as parasitic, feeding on death and decay rather than creating and enhancing. So our response to the mushroom is fear and repulsion:

Manzikert found the gray cap repellent, resembling as it did, he is quoted as saying, "both child and mushroom", and if not for his fear of retaliation from a presumed ruling body of unknown strength, the Cappan would have run the native through with his sword."

In a weird way Vandermeer's fantasy echoes the research Prof. Stajich and his colleagues are undertaking:

 resolving these earliest branches in the fungal genealogy scientists can study what the likely characteristics of ancestral fungi were, and determine what traits emerged first and were necessary as part of the transitions of life from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-evolutionary-history-fungi.html#jCp

...by resolving these earliest branches in the fungal genealogy scientists can study what the likely characteristics of ancestral fungi were, and determine what traits emerged first and were necessary as part of the transitions of life from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems.

Perhaps, from out of all this we get a glimpse of a future mushroom world!

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Friday Fungus: now this is what you call a mushroom!

Yes folks that's not photoshopped, that really is a giant - indeed humongous - puffball. 

“My uncle was driving to see my grandfather and as he was going along 30th Ave. He thought he saw something in the ditch,” Heather Hoyt, who brought the mushroom find to The Sun’s attention, said. “He pulled over to check it out and discovered that it was a huge puffball mushroom.”

It weighed in at 11.4 pounds - a pretty big mushroom but not unheard of for the Giant Puffball (Calvatia Gigantea). However, the best bit of the story is the disappointment of the mycologist consulted:

“I wish I could have seen it before they cut it up and ate it because it may very well have been one of the biggest I have witnessed.”

I'm guessing it was a fine meal! And why not.

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Himalayan viagra - an odd story of libido, caterpillars and mushrooms

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This is the tale of Ophiocordyceps sinesis or, if you're more poetic, the Mysterious Caterpillar Mushroom or even, as the Chinese name it - Winter Worm, Summer Grass:

It preys specifically on the larvae of several species of ghost moths in the Thitarodes genus. Spores infect the larvae while they live underground before pupating. The spores germinate and mycelium grows, killing and mummifying the larva/caterpillar. Eventually a fruiting body grows from the mummified larva and pops above ground, reminiscent of something from an awesome science fiction movie. 

So there you have it - a weird mushroom that grows from out of a dead caterpillar's head. And the Chinese can't get enough of it because it is believed to do great things for the immune system and (hence the Himalayan viagra tag) treat erectile dysfunction. And, not surprisingly, the result is that this wonderful little ecosystem is threatened by overharvesting:

“There is a similar trend in other Himalayan countries, such as China, India and Bhutan,” says Liu Xingzhong, a mycologist in the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Microbiology in Beijing. On the Tibetan plateau, for instance, the fungus harvest per unit area has dropped by 10 to 30 percent compared with three decades ago....

In one respect, this problem is a reflection of how the myths of libido are so rapacious. This little mushroom may not be as grand as a rhino or as magnificent as a tiger but its decline is for the same reason - the sex drive of Chinese men. But, just as with those great wild mammals, the heart of the problem is the tragedy of the commons - up on the Tibetan plateau no-one owns the places where the caterpillars and their mycological hosts do their thing. And the result is overharvesting and fights over 'territory'. As collectively-owned places, Chinese national parks provide no incentive to limit either the amounts harvested or the numbers of harvesters.

 

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Friday Fungus: more on mushrooms and cancer...

At risk of sounding like the Daily Mail here but there's some further evidence that mushrooms (to be exact, shitake mushrooms) might help prevent cervical cancer;

An extract from a Japanese mushroom kills the sexually transmitted virus HPV that can cause cervical cancer. Human papilloma virus (HPV) is a common, and highly contagious, infection that affects skin and the moist membrane linings of the body, for example, in the cervix, mouth and throat.

Pretty good news for mushroom lovers!

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Building the future - from mushrooms!

The future of building is revealed - and it involves mushrooms:

Typically “fungus” and “building” are not words people like to hear together. While we were busy scrubbing the black mold off our bathtubs, David Benjamin, head of the New York architectural firm The Living, was designing the Hy-Fi, a 40-foot-tall circular fungal tower, and potential precursor for more eco-friendly skyscrapers.

As the winner of MoMA’s annual Young Architects Program (YAP), Benjamin will exhibit the Hy-Fi in the courtyard at MoMA’s satellite art and event space PS1 in Queens starting late June. Now in its 15th season, YAP’s theme this year is sustainability and recycling. YAP also wanted a design that would provide shade, seating, and water for attendees of MoMA PS1’s 2014 Warm Up summer music series. Benjamin prevailed with a design he claims will generate no waste, requires no energy, and is 100% organic.

We've already discovered how mushrooms can solve our waste management problems and will grow into eco-friendly cars so it should be no surprise that we will be growing buildings from the little mycological darlings:

To create the Hy-Fi, the fungus bricks will be placed at the bottom the structure, while a second kind of reflective bricks, created with a daylighting mirror film devised by 3M, will be placed at the top. The reflective bricks will focus the light down the tower to create a kind of supersized petri dish, encouraging the mycelium to grow and the bricks to solidify and bond together.

Wonderful!

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Friday Fungus: tobacco paranoia

Imagine the shock! You peel back the cling film from that box or healthy, organic mushrooms and there in full view is the most poisonous thing on the planet:

A father-of-four was left disgusted after his wife discovered a cigarette inside a packet of mushrooms.

These weren't cooked mushrooms you understand but the raw ones. So I'm guessing that the complaining father-of-four would be washing and cooking said fungal delights. In which case there is precisely zero risk from the presence of the evil cigarette.

As it stands the complaining father-of-four has done rather nicely - reimbursement (enough to buy another, almost certainly cigarette-free, box of mushrooms) and the offer of a free trip to see the grower, a great chance to take those four kids on a fun outing to a mushroom farm!

But then it was a cigarette - but for his attention the four children could be dying of lung cancer by now!

PS I know it's not Friday.

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