Huskies said:

Is there a way to do BRF agar pours?

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Yeah

We call them brf pucks. I recently saw healthymycelium after 24 hours in my most recent batch.

Huskies said:

If a plate has plins, especially a lot, is that a good indicator that it is a clean culture?

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I'd guess it's more an indication that it's a robust culture. I usually get plins on a plate in about 6 weeks, but can be sooner.

If it was well sooner, it could maybe be an indication that it is contammed, since contam shrooms will sometimes fruit and sporulate earlier than usual. Shrooms (and plants) can deal with stress by trying to spread some genetic info as fast as possible.

Pic tax, a plin pushed into a new plate to clone. If you do that, do before it opens and drops spores, and do cut off the bottom, or it's not a clone.
Plin pushed into a fresh plate

LightShedder said:

Pic tax

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Huskies said:

If a plate has plins, especially a lot, is that a good indicator that it is a clean culture?

I was reading up on the Josex poke yesterday, feels like a good thing to do to make sure some of the cultures I've developed are purified.

Is there a way to do BRF agar pours?

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Pastel said:

Ive mixed some agar agar powder and a little bit of corn syrup with some water from boiling popcorn grain. Hopefully i can try pouring some agar soon, i think i might want to try pouring it into some ziplock bags until i get some pp5 containers in the mail. Also i'm wondering if i could sterilize my agar in a glass coke bottle in my pressure cooker? if not what could i use? i would like to get an agar media bottle in the future i think.

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ThurmanMurman said:

I just ran through Stro's write up again - he's most definitely referring to isolating genetics through sector selection.

Im not in any way claiming to know what's the right information, I'm just saying there's some confusion on this.

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Quote:

Although C is a clone, it isn't a true monoculture. Sectors aren't always easy to see but most of the time you can get a general idea of sectors

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ThurmanMurman said:

Valid points on age of posts - tbh, I didn't  notice that write up was 11 years old. Thanks for having this discussion regardless - I've been doing a fair bit of extra work for pretty much nothing.

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Sorry to hear that. I wonder how many more are still trying to do that.

Does anyone know a more recent succinct transfer tek on here that has pictures I could replace that link with?

....and that we could all replace it with? I know that one is frequently posted by long-time members when noobs ask how to transfer.

If not, maybe I'll copy it to my journal, correct it, and credit / link the source.

Pic tax, some agar and mycelium.

Bigworm said:

No real plins just small bumps. Yes I have plenty of dried fruit.
I'm kinda hoping it's like dried grain and I can stick a slice of it into an agar plate.

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Huskies said:

My thing is I didn't realize that BRF was more resistant to bacteria…

Is it BRF itself? Or being mixed up with

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This answer is a lot of “I think” and “if I recall correctly” but, I understand it so that the stiffer and less nutrient dense the medium, the harder time bacteria has at manoeuvring and replicating. My conclusion is that the composition of a BRF puck PF cake (a lot of moisture which is easy to sterilise) and stiffness makes it so that the bacteria present is only able to piggyback with the mycelium, but not expand rapidly enough to have a notable impact on it.
Which is equal to that cleaning a culture from bacteria, is easier at a stiffer low-nutrient agar mix, rather than a softer high-nutrient one. This because the bacteria is unable to move through it effectively by itself, as well as the mycelium stretching out quicker in search for nutrients.
This is, I believe, the reason why you can throw spores directly to PF Tek, instead of going through agar before going to grain.
(Any expert comment on this is most welcome).

As far as additives go for cleaning:
Cabin sequestering is by far the most effective as far as I’m aware, and often used in professional settings to leave bacteria behind. It could look something like this:



Main difference is that actual cabin sequestering requires a slide to go on top, making it impossible for the mycelium to move anywhere but sideways.

Henry Swanson said:

The swab chunk didn’t want to come off the scalpel so the middle of the plate is a little mangled.

niveotropicalis

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Have you tried using a syringe needle instead? I’ve found it much smoother rather than using a scalpel.

nektar61 said:

Pic tax, Still Life with Flow Hood

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