r/ContamFam mycopal asks: “Hey pal do you have any good tips or sources for info on moving mushroom tissue to agar?”
MCX Answers: The way I understand it is: you can do two types of transfers for cloning, considered most common and effective.
One is as you mentioned the splitting stipe and taking a transfer from inside the stipe. You want to ensure that your area, yourself, and your tools are cleaned with isopropyl alcohol 70% . You will tear from the base up towards the cap, with the exposed part of the STIPE, towards your laminar flow, or towards the back of your still airbox. you only need a rice size piece of transfer.
Often the inner flesh is very stringy and breaks away quite easily. I’ll personally just cut a rice size cut in a square shape from the inner part of the stipe and then gently poke that and pull it out and put it on a plate. Sometimes inner Mycelium flesh can pull away and you can put that on a plate. The mushroom fruit body is all mycelium. Everything about it is made from mycelium, and arguably all of its components, contain but also can, either: produce or generate, and proliferate mycelium from that fruit body.
The second way involves approaching the xfer from the topside of the cap, ‘dorsal’ and cutting open the center dorsal point and then take from inside the cap at the pileus-stipe junction… but from within the cap… its a little more technical and often can expose the xfer to contam from the flesh u open up before taking xfer if you arent careful in how you peel back the external flesh and when you push the knife into the cap it can push microbes down into the previously unexposed inner mycelial tissue).
The idea for these types of transfers is that contaminants in your environment that float in around you or fall off of you, if present, likely is on or near your external fruitbody. If you take from the inside of the fruitbody its arguable that its more clean and free of contaminant microbes as the primordia formation is assumedly on healthy uncontaminated mycelium and unless the flesh tears during maturation, the inner parts are fully protected from external contaminant sources while growing.
Sometimes these cooccurring microbes are harmless to your grow and to you, and can even be beneficial (like certain yeasts that are used in agar preparation) or even some naturally occurring bacteria in the substrate! I think of my tubs as a homeostatic localized microclimate - environment :)
Our tubs, and the fungi in them have similar homeostasis in the wild, and can be conceptually applied to community mycology cultivation!
I think of comparing potential “microcosm” cultivation much like the human body, external and internal… theres always gonna be contaminant microbes on our skin and around our mucosal membranes, but with proper hygiene and diet our body is its own microcosm of microbes that are fucking and fighting away under our literal noses xD —- its when one grouping of these microbes begins to advantage over the equalized body microcosm we have (think if you dont bathe you may develop yeast and bacterial infections more easily as surface conditions of your skin and within your creases, nooks and crannies will can be overpowered by something that spreads… )
and thats kind of the basic idea of germ theory I think… and I also think it applies to our grow environments if approach cultivation holistically :)
surely im missing technical nuance but I know my thoughts are in the spirit of the theory!
Hope my thoughts aid your mycojourney!
- Yoshi Cloning vid and result video
- Ashley/Boomer Shroomer Cloning vid
