Tyler Yes, we have been dropping agar into brown rice bags and also some oat.  We use 2 cuttings of agar (about a 1 cm square) per bag for our grain masters (4lbs) and then spawn across the usual 12. The yellow bits you are seeing won't be the agar but rather the metabolites being produced by cordyceps. The rice gets these very yellow and some orange bits that grow around the edges of the grain and throughout the bag.

Phillipe Kenny sounds about right, definitely thinking in the right directions!

2nd and 3rd does indeed look like stroma. That yellow discoloration followed by a hard mass are the defining signs that we look out for on our end. Although the first video shared makes me think a little more along the overlay way of things as it seemed still fairly white and not like one hard tumor. The warming up of the incubation space and letting the mycelium hang out for too long are factors that increase the chance of stroma and overlay. In our experience we only see stroma form on the surface of the block and not internally, but when going to spawn just be observant when breaking up the block and keeping an eye out for these yellow hard masses throughout the bag. We have tossed the spawn if stroma is noticed, but if low on inventory we have removed the pieces of stroma when opening the bags to spawn with. Saying that though if there is stroma the size that you are encountering, we just toss the bag, as at that stage it's just too far gone in the direction of stroma.

Never forget CoW are also referred to as the Sulphur shelf mushroom and can get a very pungent rotten egg smell when cultivated. This is just the mushroom being itself and should be nothing to be worried about as your plates showed. I'm guessing it's stronger with bag cultivation indoors as the air isn't always in motion and there is a strong collection of uninterrupted mycelium constantly creating these metabolites.

Look at all those fun shingles, I got to clone a wild species a couple months ago and we are still in trials but who knows it become a commercial strain! Awesome to see others out there making it work.

David Medlock We have grown on both MYA and PDYA and noticed no significant differences, maybe just a slight variation in growth time. Also online it seems people switch between both, I'm guessing from their own preference but nothing set in stone. We don't use peptone for our plates but there was an article in which they used peptone as part of their supplementation mixture that got added to the substrate. It showed an increase in fruit body yield and cordycepin production when getting to fruit body stage. So, I don't think it would necessarily be a bad idea as it seems the cordyceps utilizes the peptones.

Appreciate it, thank you for the good vibes🤘

Another cause could also be the fact we are using such big 10lb blocks. With all that potential I'm sure the mushrooms just overload the pinning process and then once it's established the pins decides what are more worth putting resources toward. The bigger pins with more potential for maximum spore release will always win. Also not all of those are necessarily aborted just small enough fruiting bodies where we loose some of those great morphological characteristics of the larger shrooms. Anyways perfectly normal across all types of cultivators especially oyster farmers.

the Nebrodini's were originally found near a lime quarry in Italy and the natural habitat is less than 100 sq miles so they are very set to what they will fruit in. pH is a good indicator of the amount of lime to add into your substrate. As Eric mentioned the high pH corresponds to the amount of lime and I have read success of pH around 10. Using simple pH paper would be a sufficient enough indicator.

Online with the farms I have seen, people use a variety of sizes and bags. Some people even just use pie trays or cooking trays and then whatever agriculture bag they use just placed right in there. Standard micron filter for all types of cultivation should be alright as I haven't seen any specific mention for filter considerations. We have noticed some people trying to create a thin layer of substrate for tray methods and from talking to farms we find it's best to still have a good thick layer of substrate on the tray.