Controlled indoor cultivation of black morel
thedanishmorelproject.com
thedanishmorelproject.com
"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.
I'm not sure it would be in the taxpayers' interest to make it easier for private and/or foreign competition against their investment
Of course, a successful business will pay taxes and increase economic activity etc. etc., but I don't think that's much of an argument. It absolutely is strange to see government-funded research ending up locked down like this, if that's what it is.
let's say the patent is released, and a year later every household in the world is thrilled to have black morels every night for dinner, for free, out of their DIY morel cultivation box, and nobody anywhere in the world can ever sell a morel to anyone else again.
Have "the taxpayers" seen benefit from this? In terms of currency return on investment, no. But in terms of access to a desirable commodity, heck yes. How much value have they seen? Something like 365 times the price of a meal's worth of mushrooms.
The best government research generates benefits this broad.
Suppose I found a way to make synthetic oil for 1$ per barrel from atmospheric CO2 and published it. Now I can’t capture that wealth and Exxon’s and many other companies stock tanks so it looks like global wealth decreased. However, soon everyone across the globe can now buy more with their money. Lowered transportation costs for potatoes means potatoes cost less in a very real way.
This is why patents expire, everyone gets richer when they do.
Funnily enough that's part of the plot of Metal Gear 2: https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/OILIX
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.)
On a less throwaway note, this sort of thing might be possible in a fairly small basement or ceiling space with appropriate control?
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.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/american-grown-tru...
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.
What usually happens here in Italy is that someone comes out (it is at least 30-40 years that this thing comes up regularly) with a new, better method to "insert" truffle spores in tree saplings and is wishing to sell you (for a dear price) these trees.
Only, for some reasons in your particular patch of land (which is regularly "approved" after having made - BTW expensive - surveys and laboratory checks/analysis on the soil) this doesn't happen (after 5 years, and they tell you that is too early) then nothing happens after ten or fifteen years and by that time you can't find the seller anymore or even if you can they will tell you that yours is one of the rare cases where it didn't work.
Anecdata of course and I sincerely hope that some other people had more success, but from my experience in the local agricultural district I know rather well, people that report success are maybe 5% (and likely they are IMHO lying).
Besides - at least here - land is usually raided by wild boars that - like pigs - are very capable at finding truffles.
I don't doubt that it can work, what I am telling you is that AFAIK it is not a "surely working" approach, if you have some land and some spare thousands Euro to invest in an experiment, it is fine, if you think that those thousands Euro will surely grow to a few tens in fifteen years, you are most probably wrong.
Ruff ruff! Beautiful documentary about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFYhrc0AnVw
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.
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.
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.
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.
They can be life changingly good, or not especially special. You need salt and dairy to bring out the flavor, but even then it's hit and miss. But yeah, in general they can be as flavorful as truffles, or as bland as button mushrooms.
If the average dish at that restaurant costs $40 or something, then maybe.
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-c...
I like to cut them into pieces and either sauté them or pan fry them like with light breading, like my homemade chicken nuggets.
The book describes and analyzes the globalized commodity chains of matsutake mushrooms.
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.
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.
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.
I think my favorite so far was chicken of the woods. Maybe I'll try cultivating them this year.
I love all kinds of mushrooms, and to me they do have distinct textures and flavours. Something like a porcini or a morel has a flavour I can pick out fairly easily amongst other stronger flavours. Shiitake might be one of my favourite things to eat in general.
I’ve wondered if it might be a genetic thing. Kind of like cilantro tastes awful to some people and great to others for whatever genetically determined reason. Maybe I’m a mushroom person and you’re not.
I’m in Eastern WA / OR, and the heat made our mushroom season garbage this year… it’s generally not great to begin with, but even the pro foragers were awfully quiet this year. Very concerning.