7Suns said:

Forest fires release nitrogen and promote Nitrococcus and nitrosomonas bacteria even years after the fire, all cellulose digesting fungi need nitrogen to aid in Laccase enzyme production to convert cellulose and lignin into lipids and sugars as a source of energy that’s how the nitrogen cycle works (nitrogen/carbon)

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so there’s your answer

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to why fires help morels and why Owers uses urea it’s the nitrogen, there’s even several sources that demonstrate morels will grow on rags dripped with urea every 3 days and also urea liquid culture, nitrogen is a critical aspect of wood/forest fungi

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cyclones said:

Found some gray morels and would like to try to clone them, what are some good techniques for cloning them on agar?

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mind.at.large said:

I was going to make a new thread, but figured all you fine folks around here would know. The answer is probably somewhere in this thread but alas I'll ask it again.

I recently found some nice looking importuna and put some tissue on agar to clone and hopefully cultivate. I was wondering though, since morels are Ascomycetes, the vegetative mycelium is monokaryotic, while the tertiary and mushroom producing mycelium is dikaryotic.

So, would that mean when putting a tissue sample from a mushroom, making it transition back into vegetative mycelium, two separate monokaryotic mycelia would grow?

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DigitalRhizae said:

cyclones said:

Found some gray morels and would like to try to clone them, what are some good techniques for cloning them on agar?

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I've done this with some store bought wild black morels. I took a section of tissue, dropped it in a 10% bleach solution for 2 minutes and transfered that to grain. It grew vegatative mycelium and produced sclerotia just fine. I've since transferred that culture to agar and that agar to more grain today.
Typical LME agar should work but it is difficult to transfer clean tissue as the inner tissue is so thin. That is why I used a 10% bleach solution in an attempt to chemical sterilize the section of cut tissue. I did this with about 10 30-40ml grain jars and transfered the clean ones to more grain before I actually made agar with them. But starting with agar would be best.

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WillowHarvest said:

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WillowHarvest said:

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WillowHarvest said:

I recently read some Australian research on indoor Morel fruiting that failed to induce sclerotia to fruit of several strains using parameters similar to what Ower described. They did say however that primordia formed on two PDA petri plates after being refrigerated for 11 months at 4 C. Interesting...

Here is my current thought process, and what I want to be the focus of my research this year.
1. Select a saprobic species, importuna, rufobrunnea, etc.
2. Select an aggressive strain from conducive species that aggressively form sclerotia
3. Cultivate sclerotia to maturity so that they are nutritionally capable of supporting fruiting.
4. Attempt various methods to induce carpogenic germination of sclerotia via external nutrient sources and other potential stimuli (I have several whacky ideas of how to anger my sclerotia)

Im interested to know what others thought are on this topic though. Do you think that wild morel sclerotia are "programmed" to fruit or not based on conditions during their formation? Or do you think it is the conditions present during the fruiting season that signal them to form fruit or just germinate more mycelium?

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