GROWING GOURMET - Anto2ni.it

94
CULTURING MUSHROOM
the cap. With one half of this split mushroom,
cut a small section ("square") of flesh about the
size of a kernel of grain. Quickly transfer the
excised tissue to the nutrient-filled petri dish,
and submerge the tissue into the same location
where the scalpel tip had been cooled. By inserting
the tissue part way into the agar
medium, in contrast to resting it on the surface,
the mushroom tissue has maximum contact
with the life-stimulating nutrients. Each time a
clone is taken, the scalpel is re-sterilized, cooled
and then the tissue is transferred into a separate
petri dish following the aforementioned steps.
One carefully keeps the hot scalpel tip and
the freshly poured media plates upstream of
the mushroom being cloned or the mycelium
being transferred. Next downstream is the
cultivator's hands. No matter how many
times one has disinfected his hands, one
should presume they are replete with con-
MYCELIUM ON AGAR MEDIA
Figure 71. Ideal sites for cloning a mushroom: directly above the gills or at the base of the stem. Young, firm
mushrooms are best candidates for cloning.
taminants. (To test this, wash your hands,
disinfect your fingertips with alcohol and fingerprint
newly poured media plates. In most
cases, the plates will contaminate with a
plethora of microorganisms.)
Some use a "cooling dish" into which the hot
scalpel tip is inserted before touching the living
flesh of a mushroom. Repeatedly cooling
the scalpel tip into the same medium-filled petri
dish before each inoculation is not recommended.
A mistake with any inoculation could
cause contamination to be re-transmitted with
each transfer. If, for instance, a part of the mushroom
was being invaded by Myco gone, a
mushroom-eating fungus, one bad transfer
would jeopardize all the subsequent inoculations.
Only one cooling dish should be usedfor
each transfer; the same dish that receives the
cloned tissue. In this fashion, at least one potential
cross-contamination vector is eliminated.
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