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you can isolate the best and strongest pieces of mycelium

This is almost correct. There are two basic reasons for growing out mycelium on agar.

1) Growth on agar is 2D making it very easy to see contaminations.

2) Using agar, you can isolate a single dikaryotic growth. At this stage it is difficult to tell if the isolate is the best or not... in some very rare cases the isolate may not even fruit. The benefit of the isolate is that the growth parameters are identical during the fruiting phase. In other words, all the mushrooms pin and mature at the same rate. Instead of picking a few today, and a few tomorrow, and a few the next day, etc... they are all the same, and you pick them all at once.

In a multispore innoculation the different growths compete with each other, some fruit early, others late, and some not at all. Some fruit are small, some are large, some are potent, some aren't. With an isolate from agar, everything is the same, good or bad.

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you did enlighten me w/ the fact that if I performed multi transfers while continuing to isolate the most robust strain, grew and fruited, made spore print from a robust shroom, and repeated the process it would still result in mycelia that is "average", or not yielding the same properties of the cultured mycelia that it grew from....Correct?

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If you're interested in answering, I'd also be curious if any inside growers try to mimic any outside growing conditions within their growing chamber...I'm specifically thinking of temperature fluctuations for day and night. If so, any personal conclusions or thoughts on the matter?

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