Mushrooms have landed on many prediction lists, in almost every form, from psilocybin mushrooms (part of the renewed interest in psychedelics) to thick coins of king oyster mushrooms as a stand-in for scallops. The number of small urban farms growing mushrooms is expected to bloom, and mushroom fibers will start to proliferate as a cheap, compostable medium for packaging.
Here is a robotic system that autonomously harvests mushrooms to help farms meet increased demand for their product. This robotic system continually picks, packs, and weighs mushrooms. This robot takes into account the farmer’s harvesting requirements to scan mushroom beds and intelligently packs them into boxes. The system also collects data to give farmers valuable insight about their harvest.
Opinion: Does Adding Fungi to Soil Do More Harm Than Good?
The use of mycorrhizal fungi—fungi that grow on plant roots—as biofertilizers is becoming more common. But it could have harmful effects on native ecosystems.
Fungi as mediators linking organisms and ecosystems
The success of fungi as organisms and their influence on the environment lies in their ability to span multiple dimensions of time, space, and biological interactions, that is not rivalled by other organism groups.
There is also growing evidence that fungi mediate links between different organisms and ecosystems, with the potential to affect the macroecology and evolution of those organisms.
This suggests that fungal interactions are an ecological driving force, interconnecting different levels of biological and ecological organisation of their hosts, competitors, and antagonists with the environment and ecosystem functioning.
Here we review these emerging lines of evidence by focusing on the dynamics of fungal interactions with other organism groups across various ecosystems. We conclude that the mediating role of fungi through their complex and dynamic ecological interactions underlie their importance and ubiquity across Earth's ecosystems.
Danish Biologists Cultivate Morel Mushrooms Year-Round With New Indoor Technique
The growing method produces 4.2 kilograms of mushrooms over a 22-week growing cycle, which is equivalent to about 10 kilograms per square meter, or 20 pounds of mushrooms per square yard, per year.
Their direct methods of cultivating the morels indoors are not detailed fully because they are protected under patent law, according to the Danish Morel Project website. The pair says commercial production can begin after appropriate automation of the cultivation process.
“The cost per square meter for producing a morel will be roughly the same as producing a white button mushroom”
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