Propagation

I guess the big question about mushrooms is how to keep the "culture going and how to avoid harmful contaminants (other fungi) form infecting a culture. My question is, Can you keep propagation going through "spawn" without ever having to go through the sexual cycle and deal with the spores? In other words, can you keep essentially clones going without ever introducing any new genetic material through new cultures. Of course this happens naturally all the time, but not on any production scale. In a post pole shift environment ( wet, dark with lots of rotting vegetation) we can go hunting mushrooms as long as we are familiar with what's edible. Have you kept any continuous propagation going from a single culture?

Offered by Stan.

It is definitely possible to do so but I am not sure its necessary. I'll look in to it more and see what information I can find. It is pretty easy to go through the whole process with spores, actually. For instance a method Stamets uses for propagating certain species is to mix spores in with wooden dowels in a plastic bag. The spores inoculate the dowels and then you basically hammer them in to logs. They will then grown throughout the wood and produce mushrooms... rinse ... repeat... If you are going to harvest mushrooms from the wild you had better know what you are doing. Many of them (I'm sure most know this) are very, very poisonous and look very similar to species that are perfectly safe.

Offered by Andy.