madi said:

Looks quite fuzzy on that agar, hope its not cobweb.

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madi said:

Its just so thin and fuzzy. But you'll see it soon if it is. But I trust you that its myc. Did you take any other pieces than this one?

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Next thing I know it will be a fight to the death between trich and cobweb...

I still have the original coir bed and the 'messy' first plate, so I can do more, but no this is the only "isolate" i have going at the moment.  Its just an experiment, really.

There - I changed the post title to 'experiment'

wygram said:

You're taking an awfully unnecessary contamination risk by taking samples from a container that was not spawned under the same sterile conditions we normally use for grains and agar. Spores that landed on the coir will come with the mycelium pieces you take.

Even with one grain in a coir tub you are not guaranteed that this "extreme isolation" will get you monocultures.

Which in the end means you have to do more agar work. So why not start there in the first place and always have your work under sterile conditions.

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Cloneufc said:

I dont see why it wouldnt work. I wouldnt put all my eggs into one basket. It could likely be a non fruiter. Do several more sectors and you'll have a better chance at a fruiting sector.

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SillyBilly said:

I would assume it is not an isolate because that growth is not in a perfectly uniform circle.

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LeopardMan said:

Well done gorny! Exeperimenting new things is always good

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Just following your pioneering spirit.

gornyhuy said:

Cloneufc said:

I dont see why it wouldnt work. I wouldnt put all my eggs into one basket. It could likely be a non fruiter. Do several more sectors and you'll have a better chance at a fruiting sector.

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Agreed - which is why I prefer to clone a nice cluster of fruits and isolate from there. 

Maybe I suck at agar, but from spores it seems to take *many* transfers before I get isolates.

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wygram said:

Mycelium taken from fruits might be good for finding cultures with desirable traits more easily than fruiting out multiple isolates, but even that may not be the case.

The biggest drawback is that you are getting an aged culture, which has already gone through a fruiting cycle. This is really important since the culture will probably end up having to under go a spawn expansion run, and they already have some age to them. Young fresh cultures, cold-stored are the exact opposite.

It also is a mash-up of different sub-strains of widely different traits, some good some bad. So in the end what grows are most likely average mushrooms. Easier to find "good" ones in favor of "outstanding" ones. While you don't have to test a number of isolates, how hard is that really? A BRF cake per?

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