Mycelia's Frequently Asked Questions:

• How many kilos of mushroom spawn can be produced, starting from one test tube with mother culture?

    Depending on the set up and the working hygiene: between 1000 and 50 000 kg of inoculum. 




• How is mycelium multiplied in a safe way?
  Which set up is required to produce mushroom spawn?

    The production of spawn must happen in the most hygienic conditions, by highly trained/educated personnel. Assistance is required from a firm with the necessary expertise. Mycelia provides individual vocational trainings and can also assist in the design and the set up of professional spawn laboratories. For details, click on mycelium technology.




• Can spawn from Europe be transported to other continents?

    Provided that there are sufficient precautionary measures, yes. Spawn is a living product and must be transported cool and quickly. The transport costs can turn out high, and the danger of quality problems at arrival is not imaginary.




• Can you guarantee a certain yield and mushroom quality for the strains you ship?

    As one can read at the bottom of our technical data sheets, the latter are a compilation of data, which were provided to us by our customers from different regions. It is a general rule in mushroom cultivation that the results entirely depend on the way you treat the mycelium all along the way:
  • type and treatment of substrate
  • type of bag (gas exchange is extremely important for Shiitake!)
  • inoculation rate
  • situation (temperature in the first place) in the incubation/ maturation rooms
  • climat during fructification
  • and you can think of a number of other factors, influencing the yield and aspect of the mushrooms
     So, it is extremely difficult for us to "guarantee" yields or any form of substrate transformation efficiency.




• Why use sterilized substrates for the successful production of wood- decaying mushrooms?

    One can distinguish two groups of cultivable mushrooms:
  1. Compost mushrooms, such as Agaricus bisporus, are cultivated on Agaricus compost, which is a selective substrate on which almost no other microorganisms can grow. That means, if one uses impure spawn, yields may decrease, but one will still be able to pick mushrooms.
  2. Lignivorous mushrooms, to which group belong most exotic mushroom species, are cultivated on wood substrates, which have to be sterilized, and subsequently inoculated under cleanroom-circonstances. For this kind of production method, 100% axenic cultures must be available, else everything fails.