David Medlock in our experience we are simply going off the amount of transfers rather than actual linear total growth. I haven't seen any studies looking at total linear length only people looking a subsequent generations. Yes, the transfers themselves are not the issue and it is a matter of total growth from spore. This is also general in what we have seen and people online. The interesting thing is that in some strains of cordyceps people have had double digit transfers and encountered zero degradation. Which opens the door to what is causing the degradation? Is it linear growth from spore, transfers causing a reset of growth, or just a genetic trigger that can be bred out or examined. I like the way your mind is operating, and this is a world we are hoping to explore one day as the true mechanism behind cordyceps degradation is unknown. Great discussion!! 

Eric So the label is the breakdown of different macromolecules within the soy hull. Protein, fat, fiber, and ash are all different parts that make up the entirety of the soy bean hull. the label should just be their quick test of how much of each part contributes to the total weight. The percentages not mentioned my guess would just be like carbohydrates which make up the majority. Anyways little ramble but you should be all good!

Tyler On the dish a lot of growth will start out as white and then when exposed to light can start to turn orange and very yellow, since light acts a trigger for fruiting body production. Our plates have gotten yellow and some orange after the 6 months of storage but they we still perfectly viable since on the plate it didn't keep going and try to escape the plate so to say. It just kinda reached the end of the plate and then went into a more dormant state of metabolism instead of creating much more aerial mycelium or mycelia mat creating (stayed fluffy). For cross breeding you need individual spores and then pairing up these isolation to see which ones combine and create clamp connections, or with PCR test for MAT mating types and match viable pairs. Cordyceps is notorious for senescence and after the 3rd generation this becomes super apparent. so, the idea of LC, to slant, back to LC, and then onto grain or substrate is doing a lot of generations and you may get degradation quicker.

David Medlock Whole oats work great as a substrate for cordycep production and yes OM foods does pure oat. Sometimes there can be an issue with the cordyceps being able to break down the cellulose into glucose but overall it has been proven as a viable and reliable substrate. Based off of research Brown rice helps to produce the most cordycepin and bioactives within the cordyceps mycelium and mushroom. We are thinking of trying a nice mixture of the 2 grains as pure glucose has also been proven to help cordyceps growth and so if you supplement brown rice with oats maybe you are helping to satisfy that glucose requirement. Research has shown that Magnesium Sulfate, Dipotassium Phosphate, naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) have all been shown to help with the cordycepin production and fruit body yield. These are all in low amounts like 1.0 g/L and NAA at 1.0mg/L

We just have a dymo labeler that prints the labels onto stickers and then we by hand attach the stickers. The "code" we use is nice and easy where we have General name of mushroom (blue oyster, piopinno....), date of production, our code for the strain of mushroom (POCNS,POSNOW), and then just the lot number. I don't have the best experience with fresh mushroom retail boxes but what you are doing sounds like what I see across the market and of course in stores and whatnot. We only sell the blocks so it's a nice easy box but I understand the fragility of the actual mushroom. Anyways the plastic wrap and green produce carton are generally what i've seen everyone use.

For our master mix it is 50% soybean hulls and 50%red oak sawdust, this works for all strains except shiitake they do a slightly different ratio and mixture. So not a problem at all and just may have to mix in with a hardwood substrate to ensure the full range of nutrients.

I don't think anyone here has interest in writing a book just yet lol, but I do agree it can be a bit of a pain sometimes to find the specific information mentioned in a long form podcast, especially if you've already heard the banter. I think we are going to try and think of an easy timestamped way for people to go back and find specifics if needed, kinda like you may have seen on youtube or Spotify for other long form shows. 

dry out since water will be lost as vapor under any conditions and these are just the most exposed grains. To solve this, we have just been folding the top part of the spawn bags over the filter patch to essentially block and slow down some of that gas exchange from occurring. Also having less air in the top of the bag helps to fold over and prevents having a large area where gas exchange constantly takes place. I am not the best versed in understanding CO2 relations during the spawn run but Erik should see this and be able to chime in or expand on some parts. I will also ask the great Tyler Crawford and see if he mentions anything different.

So we keep our spawn room around 700-800 ppm CO2. The concentration inside of the bag will be much higher than the outside which is ideal during the spawn run. This mimics nature where the mycelium is spreading underground and will have limited gas exchange. Different filter patches have different air exchange rates, we are using a 3B unicorn filter patch for our spawn bags. In terms of thermodynamics the main heat exchange is going on between surface of the bag and the outside, the filter patch won't have a huge impact on this flow of heat. The main heat is coming from internally of the bag from the fungi metabolism so keeping some space between bags helps them not to keep bouncing heat off of each other. Our spawn room stays at 65-70 and this maintains the bag in about the mid 70's range. You are spot on with the grain drying on the top surface. So we had this problem as well and it is due to the air exchange with the filter. The more gas exchange then the quicker that the grain will

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.