10 ms·

Controlled indoor cultivation of black morel

175 points by wy35 5y ago

gao8a 5y ago
500 server error :(
- rripken 5y ago
  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fthedanishmorelproject.com%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3... Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20211206194029/https://thedanishmorelproject.com/the-morel-project/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211206194029/https://thedanish...
jelliclesfarm 5y ago
When we develop tech like this, we are betting against environment and habitat. And trees.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Alternatively, we're reducing the demand on the native habitats morels grow in.
- malermeister 5y ago
  That's not necessarily true. Industrial scale foraging of mushrooms isn't great for forests, so relieving some of that pressure is a good, pro-habitat thing imo.
  - throwaway81523 5y ago
    Is industrial scale foraging really a thing? That is scary. I figured that there must be some cottage level foraging going on, but that most mushrooms available for sale were simply species that are easier to cultivate.
    - malermeister 5y ago
      Yup. A lot of the "nicer" (chantarelles, porcini, truffles, morels (until now! :)) ones can't be cultivated. Here's [1] an old NYT article saying there's ~8k commercial mushroom foragers in the US in 1993. I'm sure it's more now. I know that in Europe there's a lot of commercial scale mushroom foraging going on in Eastern Europe. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/28/us/rushing-to-gather-up-cash-on-northwest-s-forest-floor.html https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/28/us/rushing-to-gather-up-c...
      - giantg2 5y ago
        My favorite so far is chicken of the woods. I might try cultivating it next year.
        poulsbohemian 5y ago
        I’d love to know how you prepare it… in my area we’ve found a few, but it’s been a dark art of waiting for the snow to be off the ground to get into the areas where we know them to be, and them being dried out and dead by the time we get there…
        giantg2 5y ago
        That's interesting. I guess you're in a cold area for snow 5o still be around, since they typically fruit June-Sept here. I like to cut them into pieces and either sauté them or pan fry them like with light breading, like my homemade chicken nuggets.
        progmetaldev 5y ago
        I may have been given incorrect information, but I've heard that chicken of the woods is incredibly difficult to cultivate, close to morels (you need just the right conditions).
    - nereye 5y ago
      You might like this book, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mushroom_at_the_End_of_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mushroom_at_the_End_of_the...: The book describes and analyzes the globalized commodity chains of matsutake mushrooms.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Two sides of the same coin - building resilience and independence, having a "plan B" is effectively betting against everything working fine, risks not materializing and not needing any alternatives; no matter if it's about environment, software or politics. However, I do consider it a good and prudent thing to "bet against" things that are crucial to us. Whenever there's a major threat, it's wise to also prepare to mitigate its consequences, since saying "we must prevent this" "we need to achieve X or the bad thing will happen" is, even if very true, often not sufficient, and betting everything on the expected success would be just naive wishful thinking, we definitely have to hedge our bets for everything that matters.
- otrahuevada 5y ago
  Morels grow under a whole host of trees, some of them of very high commercial value, so I wouldn't bet on that. What's more, one simple way of getting a bunch of morels to grow on a specific patch of land turns out to be setting it on fire, so growing them on a basement would even probably end up being a net positive.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  What's the line of argumentation here? That the only reason humanity hasn't clearcut every forest in the world is because they were needed to grow mushrooms?
  - jelliclesfarm 5y ago
    No. The argument is that the inter connected web of mycelium is much more significant and crucial than edible mushrooms. No one is going to die without morels but without the soil food web, we are a dead barren planet. Mushrooms and fungi and mycelium is evidence of a living planet. We need that signal to determine the health and viability of earth. When I ask for robots on the farm, I am betting against low paid manual labour. When I develop long supply chains and invest in more and more warehouses, I am betting against local manufacturing industries. When I create indoor morels(even amongst all the other wild mushrooms, morels are very special), I am betting against the soil food web of life and cycle of life.
    - sbierwagen 5y ago
      Then you're going to be really upset when you hear commercial hydroponics exists, which grows food crops without any soil at all, and is a multi-billion dollar industry.
fifi_conner 5y ago
Their main page ( www.nordicforestfoods.com ) is up, bit the blog itself ist caput.
chasil 5y ago
First linked page: https://vimeo.com/631188068 https://vimeo.com/631188068 Video presentation of The Danish Morel Project. The morel mushroom is known as one of the world’s most coveted edible mushrooms. During the last hundred years, it has only with limited success been possible to cultivate black morel mushrooms under controlled, indoor conditions. We are therefore very pleased to announce that we finally, after many years of intensive research at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University and the University of Copenhagen, have invented and developed a method for controlled indoor cultivation of black morel mushrooms all-year-round under well defined conditions in climate chambers. We are able to produce 4.2 kilos of first-class morels per square metre within a total cultivation period of 22 weeks, corresponding to an annual production of 10 kilos of morels per square metre. The method is so well developed, that a commercial production can be started after an appropriate automation of the cultivation process. (Next link not yet seen.)
- swader999 5y ago
  Sorry kids, you'll be sharing a bedroom from here on out.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    ‘You need to share as we haven’t got mushroom.’ On a less throwaway note, this sort of thing might be possible in a fairly small basement or ceiling space with appropriate control?
    - GravitasFailure 5y ago
      Here's¹ has a video of a fairly small DIY automated setup for growing more common mushrooms. I can't say how that translates to morels, but it wouldn't be shocking if it was similar. ¹https://youtu.be/z41Wy5ZF4O8 https://youtu.be/z41Wy5ZF4O8
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        It is not similar. Mushroom growing techniques are common knowledge, but morels have had only very limited success in reproduction in outdoor environments.
wy35 5y ago
Archive link if the website 500s: https://archive.md/FQSMI https://archive.md/FQSMI
- tgtweak 5y ago
  And 500 it did. Thanks for this.
- tsol 5y ago
  Thanks for this
robbedpeter 5y ago
It's neat that their method seems to require a partner plant, the grass that's cultivated with the mushrooms. I wonder if they will be able to apply the same methodology to truffles? There's probably bacteria involved, as well - some fungi species seem to exploit super specific niches, with super specific environmental conditions needed to spread and fruit.
- ejensler 5y ago
  I came across this article in the Smithsonian magazine [0] that details a similar breakthrough for cultivated truffles in the US. The challenge commercially vs. the morels here, however, is that the partner plant for truffles appears to be _an entire forest_. [0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/american-grown-truffle-breakthrough-180977702/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/american-grown-tru...
- schainks 5y ago
  This nut has been cracked, but not in warehouse settings. As I learned this summer in Italy with my intermediate language skills, "commercial" truffle hunters purchase tree saplings whose roots are pre-seeded with truffle fungal spores, then plant them on terrain with the qualities (sun facing, slope, stone content, etc.) that make favorable growing conditions. As the trees mature, you start getting regular annual harvest of truffles, but you will wait years before you have anything resembling profitable truffle production. Once your "habitat" is stable, though, you can continually generate truffles during truffle season for more or less generations, assuming the climate doesn't turn on you. You'll need animal support, of course, to harvest :) Climate change is currently making annual volumes volatile, as recent seasons have seen too much water or not enough. In addition to defending their own private lands from trespassing thieves (who regularly try to poison their truffle dogs), commercial hunters have had to learn new skills at water management to keep their grounds in as "stable" state as possible during truffle season. Of course, when you have a bunch of land with trees growing on it, it's normal to also grow food and livestock, too. It's very to _only_ deal in truffles for one's livelihood.
  - jaclaz 5y ago
PeterisP 5y ago
To me, the interesting part was "In 2006, we filed an international patent application for the cultivation of morels in collaboration with a private patent agency. The application described, among other things, two of the most central cultivation principles which are also used today in our fully developed method for the controlled indoor cultivation of black morels, all-year-round. However, shortly after the application was approved, we decided, on the advice of the Danish Patent Directorate, to withdraw the application before it was published worldwide, as in practice it is relatively easy to circumvent a patent of this type. We are therefore now in a position where we have chosen once and for all to keep the key points of our method secret, not least because we are currently considering the commercial possibilities. This is why we are unfortunately unable to provide any more information on the cultivation process than is given on this website." in combination with their description of how they and many others spent many years unsuccessfully trying to reproduce a 30 year old USA patent that also claimed an ability to cultivate morels indoors.
- foxhop 5y ago
  Mother nature is displeased with purposeful throttling of her feminine energy and so I AM going to reverse engineer. I AM the inoculation, I AM the spore manifest. Grow.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  I surely hope they were privately funded, because being funded by taxpayers money and keeping the results a secret is a really shitty thing to do.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    why? i'd say that if they're funded by taxpayers the most important thing is for taxpayers to reap their fare share of the profits. if those profits can be kept higher by keeping things secret it's a win for the taxpayer. I'm not sure it would be in the taxpayers' interest to make it easier for private and/or foreign competition against their investment
    - 5y ago
sabujp 5y ago
never had a morel, maybe now i can afford one
- micro_cam 5y ago
  They are one of the easier wild mushrooms to find and identify…they show up in the spring after a fire.
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    And they sometimes have a smoky flavour to them!
- poulsbohemian 5y ago
  I hunt mushrooms, including morels, and if I’m being honest the hunt is more enjoyable than the eating. It’s fun to find the various species, but I don’t find that the flavor of morels is anything special or that I’m limited in the kitchen by not having them available.
  - whirledpeas 5y ago
    I am on the complete opposite side of this. I eat a fair amount of wild mushrooms and morels are the ones I enjoy most. My kids too. They pretty much don’t eat anything except morels. To me morels have all of the good mushroom flavour and texture without any of the bad parts.
    - poulsbohemian 5y ago
      I guess it depends a lot on what’s available to you in your area and what you like to make… as I think about it, I end up using mushrooms a lot in meat-substitute scenarios, where I want something with a lot of body. Think stuffed mushrooms, sautéed mushroom appetizers, vegetarian burgers - things like that. So your criminis and portobellos have a lot of body for those kinds of things. Likewise if I’m making something like a hot and sour soup or a homemade ramen, I want something that’s going to have the right mouthfeel and ideally be traditional to those styles. So… I guess when I think about the varieties of mushrooms that can generally be found growing in my areas - chanterelles and boletes are perhaps a better fit for things I make. I know where the pro foragers are going in our area, but even they don’t find tremendous quantities of morels… in our particular area, the season seems exceptionally brief. I get enough each year to toss them with some pasta, but the flavor is so mild and the body is so spongy that apart from “the thrill of the hunt” I’d be just as happy to substitute some other variety. I’d be very curious how you use them… I do find that if I dry them and use them to augment a soup broth, they add a nice umami.
leptoniscool 5y ago
It looks like morel mushrooms has been successfully farmed on a large scale in China for some time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEwOZwkl-Ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEwOZwkl-Ao
- alecst 5y ago
  Indoor is the key word.
- wy35 5y ago
  Farming indoors provides a host of benefits, like lack of pests and year-round cultivation.
throwawayboise 5y ago
Mushrooms all taste the same to me. People go crazy "hunting" morels, keeping their locations secret, etc. I've tried them, they are nothing special.
- giantg2 5y ago
  I'll admit, they didn't really live up to the hype for me either. They were good, but I think they were just hyped to the point they could never live up to it. I think my favorite so far was chicken of the woods. Maybe I'll try cultivating them this year.
  - Wingman4l7 5y ago
    I wouldn't bother -- I tracked reports of amateur cultivation for Laetiporus sulphureus in past years, and did not see much success. If there is any to be had, it's likely outdoor-only.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Yeah, I would be following Field and Forest's method. Their process is supposed to have a decent success rate.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 14 5y ago
  I have the same sentiment for the Chanterelle mushrooms. Apparently they are popular in Europe and are very common to the woods of British Columbia where I live. . I’ve picked thousands of them. We used to go out as teens and pick enough to get some weekend drinking money. I’ve tried a few different ways of cooking them but they just are not good. I would literally have to be in a survival situation before I would seek them out for food. But you can get $2-$5 a pound selling them so I do like them for that fact. It seems like such a poor mans food like something from the past that people ate because they had to the taste is just not good but people buy them. I don’t understand but have to guess some people’s taste is just different then mine. Or maybe it’s not special because I can go out pick them 3-4 months a year.
oneandonley1 5y ago
It's so funny how they tried to patent indoor cultivation Cannabis has perfected indoor AG for years now. Its just now that other Ag industry's are waking up to it. Indoor cultivators know how to control every aspect of their environment. I'm confident a mushroom farmer could reproduce this.
- naikrovek 5y ago
  many many have tried, and only a small few have succeeded, and last I checked, none were giving up any of the details about the growth medium or environment to anyone else. this article is not working for me now, and I hope this is The Day where The Secrets are revealed. probably not, but one can hope.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  Morels are (extremely) picky about nutrients.
- erk__ 5y ago
  If you dig a bit around the company register you can see that they have been working on getting this working since at least the 80s. So it is probably not something someone can reproduce at home easily
poulsbohemian 5y ago
Huckleberries are the other thing that comes to mind in terms of a popular item that has not (AFAIK) reached a point of cultivation. If they’ve figured this out for Morels, maybe there are similar techniques for Huckleberries, as to my thinking that rich forest loam isn’t terribly different for the two…
- dustintrex 5y ago
  Cloudberries/bakeapples are another crop that seems to defy all attempts to cultivate them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_chamaemorus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_chamaemorus And then you have tropical fruits like mangosteen that can be grown easily enough in suitable climates, but are very difficult to transport long distances.
  - hibachi_drama 5y ago
    Mangosteens are actually easily transported and I've purchased them in a number of Asian markets in the US and London, though quality may deteriorate. There are many other fruit, however, which spoil after a day or so, despite refrigeration: Pawpaw (Asiminia Triloba) Jamaican Strawberry (Muntingia Calibura) Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) Additionally, there are fruit that aren't suitable for commercial sale due to tenderness: Peanut Butter Fruit (Bunchosia grandulifera) Gummy Worm Fruit (Cercropia) Many fruit that are properly ripened won't ship well, which is why starfruit from the store never taste good. Weird Fruit Explorer and Earth Titan have tons of info on fruit if you'd like to learn more about what is growing around the world.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  In Michigan (where I can speak to) they don't really occur together. I guess we have wild blueberries more than we have huckleberries though.
  - poulsbohemian 5y ago
    Yeah, I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever found Huckleberries and mushrooms directly adjacent, so much that I observe that they visually appear to like similar ground conditions, elevation, and perhaps tree friends. I’d further observe that Huckleberries do better in dry and shady forest floor by comparison to the affinity that Morels seem to have for water and moss. I’d also note that there is a relationship between burn areas for Morels that I don’t think is at all a factor for Huckleberries.
drallison 5y ago
Yum! The patent and intellectual property rights issues show how problematic and ineffectual our current laws are. Anyone have any thoughts as to how to equitably restructure our concepts and rights about intellectual property.

175 points by wy35 5y ago

gao8a 5y ago

500 server error :(

rripken 5y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fthedanishmorelproject.com%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3... Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20211206194029/https://thedanishmorelproject.com/the-morel-project/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211206194029/https://thedanish...

jelliclesfarm 5y ago

When we develop tech like this, we are betting against environment and habitat. And trees.

ceejayoz 5y ago
Alternatively, we're reducing the demand on the native habitats morels grow in.
malermeister 5y ago
That's not necessarily true. Industrial scale foraging of mushrooms isn't great for forests, so relieving some of that pressure is a good, pro-habitat thing imo.
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  Is industrial scale foraging really a thing? That is scary. I figured that there must be some cottage level foraging going on, but that most mushrooms available for sale were simply species that are easier to cultivate.
  - malermeister 5y ago
    Yup. A lot of the "nicer" (chantarelles, porcini, truffles, morels (until now! :)) ones can't be cultivated. Here's [1] an old NYT article saying there's ~8k commercial mushroom foragers in the US in 1993. I'm sure it's more now. I know that in Europe there's a lot of commercial scale mushroom foraging going on in Eastern Europe. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/28/us/rushing-to-gather-up-cash-on-northwest-s-forest-floor.html https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/28/us/rushing-to-gather-up-c...
    - giantg2 5y ago
      My favorite so far is chicken of the woods. I might try cultivating it next year.
      - poulsbohemian 5y ago
        I’d love to know how you prepare it… in my area we’ve found a few, but it’s been a dark art of waiting for the snow to be off the ground to get into the areas where we know them to be, and them being dried out and dead by the time we get there…
        giantg2 5y ago
        That's interesting. I guess you're in a cold area for snow 5o still be around, since they typically fruit June-Sept here. I like to cut them into pieces and either sauté them or pan fry them like with light breading, like my homemade chicken nuggets.
      - progmetaldev 5y ago
        I may have been given incorrect information, but I've heard that chicken of the woods is incredibly difficult to cultivate, close to morels (you need just the right conditions).
  - nereye 5y ago
    You might like this book, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mushroom_at_the_End_of_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mushroom_at_the_End_of_the...: The book describes and analyzes the globalized commodity chains of matsutake mushrooms.
PeterisP 5y ago
Two sides of the same coin - building resilience and independence, having a "plan B" is effectively betting against everything working fine, risks not materializing and not needing any alternatives; no matter if it's about environment, software or politics. However, I do consider it a good and prudent thing to "bet against" things that are crucial to us. Whenever there's a major threat, it's wise to also prepare to mitigate its consequences, since saying "we must prevent this" "we need to achieve X or the bad thing will happen" is, even if very true, often not sufficient, and betting everything on the expected success would be just naive wishful thinking, we definitely have to hedge our bets for everything that matters.
otrahuevada 5y ago
Morels grow under a whole host of trees, some of them of very high commercial value, so I wouldn't bet on that. What's more, one simple way of getting a bunch of morels to grow on a specific patch of land turns out to be setting it on fire, so growing them on a basement would even probably end up being a net positive.
sbierwagen 5y ago
What's the line of argumentation here? That the only reason humanity hasn't clearcut every forest in the world is because they were needed to grow mushrooms?
- jelliclesfarm 5y ago
  No. The argument is that the inter connected web of mycelium is much more significant and crucial than edible mushrooms. No one is going to die without morels but without the soil food web, we are a dead barren planet. Mushrooms and fungi and mycelium is evidence of a living planet. We need that signal to determine the health and viability of earth. When I ask for robots on the farm, I am betting against low paid manual labour. When I develop long supply chains and invest in more and more warehouses, I am betting against local manufacturing industries. When I create indoor morels(even amongst all the other wild mushrooms, morels are very special), I am betting against the soil food web of life and cycle of life.
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    Then you're going to be really upset when you hear commercial hydroponics exists, which grows food crops without any soil at all, and is a multi-billion dollar industry.

fifi_conner 5y ago

Their main page ( www.nordicforestfoods.com ) is up, bit the blog itself ist caput.

chasil 5y ago

First linked page: https://vimeo.com/631188068 https://vimeo.com/631188068 Video presentation of The Danish Morel Project. The morel mushroom is known as one of the world’s most coveted edible mushrooms. During the last hundred years, it has only with limited success been possible to cultivate black morel mushrooms under controlled, indoor conditions. We are therefore very pleased to announce that we finally, after many years of intensive research at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University and the University of Copenhagen, have invented and developed a method for controlled indoor cultivation of black morel mushrooms all-year-round under well defined conditions in climate chambers. We are able to produce 4.2 kilos of first-class morels per square metre within a total cultivation period of 22 weeks, corresponding to an annual production of 10 kilos of morels per square metre. The method is so well developed, that a commercial production can be started after an appropriate automation of the cultivation process. (Next link not yet seen.)

swader999 5y ago
Sorry kids, you'll be sharing a bedroom from here on out.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  ‘You need to share as we haven’t got mushroom.’ On a less throwaway note, this sort of thing might be possible in a fairly small basement or ceiling space with appropriate control?
  - GravitasFailure 5y ago
    Here's¹ has a video of a fairly small DIY automated setup for growing more common mushrooms. I can't say how that translates to morels, but it wouldn't be shocking if it was similar. ¹https://youtu.be/z41Wy5ZF4O8 https://youtu.be/z41Wy5ZF4O8
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      It is not similar. Mushroom growing techniques are common knowledge, but morels have had only very limited success in reproduction in outdoor environments.

wy35 5y ago

Archive link if the website 500s: https://archive.md/FQSMI https://archive.md/FQSMI

tgtweak 5y ago
And 500 it did. Thanks for this.
tsol 5y ago
Thanks for this

robbedpeter 5y ago

It's neat that their method seems to require a partner plant, the grass that's cultivated with the mushrooms. I wonder if they will be able to apply the same methodology to truffles? There's probably bacteria involved, as well - some fungi species seem to exploit super specific niches, with super specific environmental conditions needed to spread and fruit.

ejensler 5y ago
I came across this article in the Smithsonian magazine [0] that details a similar breakthrough for cultivated truffles in the US. The challenge commercially vs. the morels here, however, is that the partner plant for truffles appears to be _an entire forest_. [0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/american-grown-truffle-breakthrough-180977702/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/american-grown-tru...
schainks 5y ago
This nut has been cracked, but not in warehouse settings. As I learned this summer in Italy with my intermediate language skills, "commercial" truffle hunters purchase tree saplings whose roots are pre-seeded with truffle fungal spores, then plant them on terrain with the qualities (sun facing, slope, stone content, etc.) that make favorable growing conditions. As the trees mature, you start getting regular annual harvest of truffles, but you will wait years before you have anything resembling profitable truffle production. Once your "habitat" is stable, though, you can continually generate truffles during truffle season for more or less generations, assuming the climate doesn't turn on you. You'll need animal support, of course, to harvest :) Climate change is currently making annual volumes volatile, as recent seasons have seen too much water or not enough. In addition to defending their own private lands from trespassing thieves (who regularly try to poison their truffle dogs), commercial hunters have had to learn new skills at water management to keep their grounds in as "stable" state as possible during truffle season. Of course, when you have a bunch of land with trees growing on it, it's normal to also grow food and livestock, too. It's very to _only_ deal in truffles for one's livelihood.
- jaclaz 5y ago

PeterisP 5y ago

To me, the interesting part was "In 2006, we filed an international patent application for the cultivation of morels in collaboration with a private patent agency. The application described, among other things, two of the most central cultivation principles which are also used today in our fully developed method for the controlled indoor cultivation of black morels, all-year-round. However, shortly after the application was approved, we decided, on the advice of the Danish Patent Directorate, to withdraw the application before it was published worldwide, as in practice it is relatively easy to circumvent a patent of this type. We are therefore now in a position where we have chosen once and for all to keep the key points of our method secret, not least because we are currently considering the commercial possibilities. This is why we are unfortunately unable to provide any more information on the cultivation process than is given on this website." in combination with their description of how they and many others spent many years unsuccessfully trying to reproduce a 30 year old USA patent that also claimed an ability to cultivate morels indoors.

foxhop 5y ago
Mother nature is displeased with purposeful throttling of her feminine energy and so I AM going to reverse engineer. I AM the inoculation, I AM the spore manifest. Grow.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
I surely hope they were privately funded, because being funded by taxpayers money and keeping the results a secret is a really shitty thing to do.
- namdnay 5y ago
  why? i'd say that if they're funded by taxpayers the most important thing is for taxpayers to reap their fare share of the profits. if those profits can be kept higher by keeping things secret it's a win for the taxpayer. I'm not sure it would be in the taxpayers' interest to make it easier for private and/or foreign competition against their investment
  - 5y ago

sabujp 5y ago

never had a morel, maybe now i can afford one

micro_cam 5y ago
They are one of the easier wild mushrooms to find and identify…they show up in the spring after a fire.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  And they sometimes have a smoky flavour to them!
poulsbohemian 5y ago
I hunt mushrooms, including morels, and if I’m being honest the hunt is more enjoyable than the eating. It’s fun to find the various species, but I don’t find that the flavor of morels is anything special or that I’m limited in the kitchen by not having them available.
- whirledpeas 5y ago
  I am on the complete opposite side of this. I eat a fair amount of wild mushrooms and morels are the ones I enjoy most. My kids too. They pretty much don’t eat anything except morels. To me morels have all of the good mushroom flavour and texture without any of the bad parts.
  - poulsbohemian 5y ago
    I guess it depends a lot on what’s available to you in your area and what you like to make… as I think about it, I end up using mushrooms a lot in meat-substitute scenarios, where I want something with a lot of body. Think stuffed mushrooms, sautéed mushroom appetizers, vegetarian burgers - things like that. So your criminis and portobellos have a lot of body for those kinds of things. Likewise if I’m making something like a hot and sour soup or a homemade ramen, I want something that’s going to have the right mouthfeel and ideally be traditional to those styles. So… I guess when I think about the varieties of mushrooms that can generally be found growing in my areas - chanterelles and boletes are perhaps a better fit for things I make. I know where the pro foragers are going in our area, but even they don’t find tremendous quantities of morels… in our particular area, the season seems exceptionally brief. I get enough each year to toss them with some pasta, but the flavor is so mild and the body is so spongy that apart from “the thrill of the hunt” I’d be just as happy to substitute some other variety. I’d be very curious how you use them… I do find that if I dry them and use them to augment a soup broth, they add a nice umami.

leptoniscool 5y ago

It looks like morel mushrooms has been successfully farmed on a large scale in China for some time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEwOZwkl-Ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEwOZwkl-Ao

alecst 5y ago
Indoor is the key word.
wy35 5y ago
Farming indoors provides a host of benefits, like lack of pests and year-round cultivation.

throwawayboise 5y ago

Mushrooms all taste the same to me. People go crazy "hunting" morels, keeping their locations secret, etc. I've tried them, they are nothing special.

giantg2 5y ago
I'll admit, they didn't really live up to the hype for me either. They were good, but I think they were just hyped to the point they could never live up to it. I think my favorite so far was chicken of the woods. Maybe I'll try cultivating them this year.
- Wingman4l7 5y ago
  I wouldn't bother -- I tracked reports of amateur cultivation for Laetiporus sulphureus in past years, and did not see much success. If there is any to be had, it's likely outdoor-only.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Yeah, I would be following Field and Forest's method. Their process is supposed to have a decent success rate.
deleted 5y ago
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14 5y ago
I have the same sentiment for the Chanterelle mushrooms. Apparently they are popular in Europe and are very common to the woods of British Columbia where I live. . I’ve picked thousands of them. We used to go out as teens and pick enough to get some weekend drinking money. I’ve tried a few different ways of cooking them but they just are not good. I would literally have to be in a survival situation before I would seek them out for food. But you can get $2-$5 a pound selling them so I do like them for that fact. It seems like such a poor mans food like something from the past that people ate because they had to the taste is just not good but people buy them. I don’t understand but have to guess some people’s taste is just different then mine. Or maybe it’s not special because I can go out pick them 3-4 months a year.

oneandonley1 5y ago

It's so funny how they tried to patent indoor cultivation Cannabis has perfected indoor AG for years now. Its just now that other Ag industry's are waking up to it. Indoor cultivators know how to control every aspect of their environment. I'm confident a mushroom farmer could reproduce this.

naikrovek 5y ago
many many have tried, and only a small few have succeeded, and last I checked, none were giving up any of the details about the growth medium or environment to anyone else. this article is not working for me now, and I hope this is The Day where The Secrets are revealed. probably not, but one can hope.
maxerickson 5y ago
Morels are (extremely) picky about nutrients.
erk__ 5y ago
If you dig a bit around the company register you can see that they have been working on getting this working since at least the 80s. So it is probably not something someone can reproduce at home easily

poulsbohemian 5y ago

Huckleberries are the other thing that comes to mind in terms of a popular item that has not (AFAIK) reached a point of cultivation. If they’ve figured this out for Morels, maybe there are similar techniques for Huckleberries, as to my thinking that rich forest loam isn’t terribly different for the two…

dustintrex 5y ago
Cloudberries/bakeapples are another crop that seems to defy all attempts to cultivate them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_chamaemorus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_chamaemorus And then you have tropical fruits like mangosteen that can be grown easily enough in suitable climates, but are very difficult to transport long distances.
- hibachi_drama 5y ago
  Mangosteens are actually easily transported and I've purchased them in a number of Asian markets in the US and London, though quality may deteriorate. There are many other fruit, however, which spoil after a day or so, despite refrigeration: Pawpaw (Asiminia Triloba) Jamaican Strawberry (Muntingia Calibura) Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) Additionally, there are fruit that aren't suitable for commercial sale due to tenderness: Peanut Butter Fruit (Bunchosia grandulifera) Gummy Worm Fruit (Cercropia) Many fruit that are properly ripened won't ship well, which is why starfruit from the store never taste good. Weird Fruit Explorer and Earth Titan have tons of info on fruit if you'd like to learn more about what is growing around the world.
maxerickson 5y ago
In Michigan (where I can speak to) they don't really occur together. I guess we have wild blueberries more than we have huckleberries though.
- poulsbohemian 5y ago
  Yeah, I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever found Huckleberries and mushrooms directly adjacent, so much that I observe that they visually appear to like similar ground conditions, elevation, and perhaps tree friends. I’d further observe that Huckleberries do better in dry and shady forest floor by comparison to the affinity that Morels seem to have for water and moss. I’d also note that there is a relationship between burn areas for Morels that I don’t think is at all a factor for Huckleberries.

drallison 5y ago

Yum! The patent and intellectual property rights issues show how problematic and ineffectual our current laws are. Anyone have any thoughts as to how to equitably restructure our concepts and rights about intellectual property.