Abstract: A mushroom fungus belonging to the order of Agaricales, is cultured with good efficiency by using a liquid culture medium in such a way as to prepare the mycelia separated from the culture medium such that the culturing liquid can be served for food use. A liquid culture medium containing 3 to 16 g/liter of sucrose and 1 to 6 g/liter of maltose as a carbon source and 0.3 to 1.2 g/liter of yeast extract as a nitrogen source is inoculated with Agaricus mycelia and culturing is conducted by blowing into the culture medium sterilized air of 20 to 90% of the oxygen concentration.
Abstract: Disclosed is an efficient method for culturing an edible basidiomycetous fungus such as Mushroom Agaricus Blazei Murill in a liquid culture medium to give fungus aggregates of several centimeter size. Characteristically, the liquid culture medium is formulated with sucrose as a carbon source in the form of crude cane sugar in combination with a water-insoluble growth-supporting material in the form of a fine powder to serve as the core of the fungus aggregates as selected from crushed sugarcane, sugarcane bagasse, pine trees and wheat bran. Further characteristically, the culturing procedure is carried out under an oxygen-enriched condition by blowing oxygen-enriched air of at least 30% by volume oxygen into the culture medium under pressurization at 0.12 to 0.5 MPa (absolute) in a specified blowing rate.