Dry bubble disease may cause a lot of problems because the spores spread quickly. It’s essential to identify and remove the first affected mushrooms to prevent an outbreak of the disease throughout your entire nursery. So how do you remove the first infected mushrooms?

Dry bubble disease is spread by spores. The spores are sticky and are spread by any carrier to which they may adhere, such as people, flies, dust, water, etc.

The best way of preventing the spread of spores is by covering an infected mushroom and removing it. Wet a tissue with a disinfectant such as alcohol or methylated spirits. The spores will stick to a wet tissue. Carefully and slowly place the wet tissue over the infected mushroom without causing any turbulence, which would make the spores fly away. When you have covered the mushroom with the tissue, cover your hand with a plastic bag and pick up the mushroom along with a good amount of the surrounding casing soil. Turn the bag containing the infected mushroom and the casing soil inside out and seal it. Leave the bag containing the infected mushroom in the growing room and dispose of it after you have steamed the growing room.

There are other methods you could use, for example with a plastic bottle. Cut off the bottle’s base, place the bottle over the infected mushroom and fill it with salt.

Whichever method you use, make sure you don’t spread the spores. A single drop of water on an infected mushroom would spread billions of spores over a distance of more than one metre from the mushroom. A few days later you would then see lots of mushrooms showing the first signs of dry bubble disease around that first mushroom.

Regularly check the area from which you have removed the infected mushroom during the next few days to see whether the disease reappears.

More information on how to control dry bubble disease can be found on pages 114-116 of the Mushroom Signals book.

Mark den Ouden

The next Master class Mushroom composting and growing is 21 – 26 October, there are still seat available, more information about the course, click here.

In 2014, Ecovative Designs was working to combine mycelium with local crop waste to make a compostable biomaterial for packaging, and continue to expand their efforts. One example: A collaboration with Netherlands-based designer Eric Klarenbeek who 3D-prints with living mycelium and potato starch to create safe and sustainable products. The results are lightweight, strong, fire-resistant, water-repellent, and biodegradable.

In this Motherboard video from 2015, we meet Klarenbeek, as well as other innovative designers, scientists, and researchers—Han Wösten, Maurizio Montalti, and Willem Velthoven—who are working to improve this renewable biopolymer material for both mass production and creative endeavors. It’s an ambitious effort to replace the single-use plastics that are plaguing our planet. A summary of the mission from Klarenbeek’s Krown Design:

Mycelium is infinitely available and acts as the living glue to bind this organic waste. Let’s join forces to strive for a less plastic and oil dependent economy!

The material is literally grown, not manufactured. We use a growing organism to transform agricultural waste products like husks from hemp, flax and corn stalk into a beautiful protective product that is safe and natural.

Read the full article on The Kid Should See This.

Video credit: MOTHERBOARD

A company in British Columbia is working on the cutting edge of technological design. Salmon Arm's Technology Brewing Corporation has just been awarded $50,000 from B.C.'s Agritech Innovation Challenge for its development of a vision-guided robot capable of accurately picking, trimming and placing mushrooms in store-ready boxes.

"I'm often (asked) aren't you worried about taking people's jobs? Everything that we've automatized people don't want to do," Technology Brewing founder Mike Boudreau said. Boudreau built his first robot in 1985 and launched Technology Brewing in 1999 transitioning the company into robotics in 2006. As someone on the frontline of the robotic world, Boudreau explains the industry, and it isn't quite what one would expect. The jobs the company's robots have been designed to do are far less glamorous than the robots themselves.

See, identify and pick
As mushrooms come in different shapes and sizes, and at some stages of their growth double in size in just 24 hours, Boudreau's company is developing a robot that can see the mushrooms, identify which ones to pick and which to leave. If it sounds complex and expensive it's because it is.

Read the full article here.