Monokaryons or mold?

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Nimpo
Big Black

Registered: 05/10/12
Posts: 2,699

Monokaryons or mold?

#28949516 - 09/17/24 09:50 AM (2 years, 1 month ago)

Ive been checking out EGs Youtube channel for several weeks as Ive been curious about the mating/crossing process and wanted to learn more. All monos are tomentose but not all tomentose mycelium are monos. Monos dont seem to fruit, either.

Found a great thread in advanced mush cult covering the topic as well.

Ive been sitting on an APEU culture that came from a tiny portion of a spore swab that I had streaked across the germ plate and isolated some tomentose mycelium. Ive grown this culture before but my previous runs were all rhizo on agar before going to grain. This time no matter how many transfers/nutrient mix, it all stayed tomentose. I sent two T3 plates to grain and then spawned those into shoeboxes at 1:3 and 1:4.

Its been ~5 weeks since spawning, both SBs are fully colonized (though sub is shrinking) and theres no signs of knots/pins/anything related to a fruiting body. Ive got a monotub with the same culture also currently colonizing.

What are the odds that this culture is actually a mono and wont be going anywhere? Or is all mold? Without a microscope to check for clamps/lack of clamps I know it wont be possible to definitely say, but Id hate to keep hogging up space with tubs that wont fruit.

Agar (pulled from cold storage for pic)

APEU Mono currently colonizing

Maz Mono spawned 2.5 weeks after the shoeboxes that is already pinning

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muumilleniaali
Gardener

Registered: 05/12/24
Posts: 31
Loc: The happiest country on Earth
Last seen: 30 days, 6 hours

Re: Monokaryons or mold?

[Re: Nimpo]
#28955451 - 09/21/24 10:12 AM (2 years, 28 days ago)

It's a bit difficult to say without seeing the T0 plate at the time of isolation. If you had let it grow to the point where the entire plate is covered by mycelium, the chance of isolating a monokaryon is close to zero. On the other hand, if you had very few spores on the piece of the swab to begin with and did the T1 sufficiently early, it might be possible that you indeed accidentally isolated monokaryotic mycelium.

That being said, APEs can take very long to start pinning so don't freak out just yet. Make sure that you ensure sufficient GE and surface conditions. To me, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with your SB, beside maybe droplets a bit too big for my taste. I'd try to carefully suck those away with a corner of a tissue.

Your monotub seems maybe a bit funky though. It doesn't look like mold but I haven't seen boundaries like that between the growth "cells" before. Are you using pseudo-casing?

Another experiment you can do: transfer both of the isolates onto the same agar plate, side by side. If you can see the mycelia connect in the middle by forming thicker or even rhizomorphic growth, then you know for a fact that you are indeed working with at least one monokaryon. (di-mon pairing is still possible) Just remember that them not connecting does not mean that they are monokaryons; They might just be incompatible.

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