Mycelium in the Lab
During the course of "Mycelium in the Lab" we will show you the essential lab basics required for mycelium cultivation, from understanding spores and cultures to identifying and addressing contamination. With a strong emphasis on hands-on learning, we'll show you how to prepare, inoculate, and incubate mycelial cultures, and share tips to get the best possible outcomes in your experiments.
What you'll learn
- Introduction to the fundamental aspects of setting up and working within a mycology lab.
- Art and science of mycelium cultivation and best practices.
- Spores and Cultures: Understand various ways to work with fungal cultures.
- Exploring different ingredients and nutrients for agar recipes to grow your mycelial cultures.
- Step-by-step guidance on preparing agar and setting up your petri dishes for successful growth.
- Efficient and sterile workflow for inoculating and expanding your mycelium in preparation for your bulk substrate.
- Learn various inoculation techniques, covering agar to agar, LC to agar, agar to grain, and LC to grain methods.
- Understand ways to store your cultures for longevity.
- Parameters for incubating your cultures, ensuring optimum growth and health.
Understanding Cultures
Before you can start growing your own myco-objects, you need a living mycelium culture. This mycelium, often referred to as the "master culture", can be the source of all your future mycelial lineages if handled correctly.
Working with Agar
Working with agar is an essential tool for any budding biodesigner or mycologist. Leveling up your skills in this area allows you to have a glimpse into the fascinating world of mycelium growth, as well as more clarity and control over strains and genetics.
Expanding Your Mycelium
If you are starting from a mycelium culture you will want to expand that culture ten-fold at least to be able to prototype your myco-materials. Here we show you one way to do that - through grain inoculations (making spawn).
Example Curriculum
Level-up Your Lab Skills
Understand and work on the necessary skills to keep your own mycelium culture library, clone wild mushroom strains for myco-material experimentation and learn watch various types of mycelium form beautiful networks as they grow!
More Fungal Offerings
Ready to nerd out with us? Continue your learning adventure with the rest of the bundle!
