I mean, if the slightest bacteria can destroy the mushrooms growth or even make them not grow at all.. how do they survive and expand in nature?
In: Earth Science
Mushrooms and fungi can grow in many different environments, and they also produce millions of spores so they have very good chances of at least one of them being able to colonize an area. When people grow mushrooms artificially in mycoculture, they generally want to maximize the number of spores that colonize the substrate. We also generally harvest the mushrooms, which are the “fruiting body” of the mycelium, or cobwebby looking filaments that the fungus spends most of it’s time growing. This means that the mushroom you grow has less time to put spores into the environment because you harvest it instead of letting it decompose like it would in nature. You don’t necessarily need a sterile environment to grow mushrooms, but keeping your growing medium (sawdust, rice flour, etc) sterile can help reduce the amount of contamination and give you a better success rate. Mold and yeasts are also fungi, and are very opportunistic and can quickly spread into a suitable substrate, usually faster than a mushroom mycelium can colonize it. Sterilization simply improves your chances of growing the type of fungus you want, rather than random molds or yeasts which usually exist in the form of floating airborne spores.
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