Cornell University

Food Mycology

refreshingly fungusy

I ate fungus slime, and it made my breath minty fresh

Fungi have been harnessed by industry to make all kinds of things that might surprise you. It’s tricky to get through a week without eating something fungal. Today we bring you pullulan, with which you make edible films and other clever things. It’s a compound produced by a slippery mold, Aureobasidium pullulans.

Moldy bread is cool

There’s nothing more fascinating than watching molds grow in time lapse. Or is there? This student post describes the inner life of Rhizopus, a remarkably busy and exuberant genus of molds. It is probably eating something in your kitchen as we speak! Today we admire the magnificence of Rhizopus eating your lunch, and introduce its surprising and extraordinary sidekick.

oysters en route

The Future of Fungal Freshness?

What if mushrooms weren’t grown in dank grow rooms by gnomes and elves, but instead grew right in their clever packaging on the way to market? Our student reporter interviews designer Agata Jaworska about her concept ‘Made in Transit,’ presented as her MS thesis at the renowned Dutch nexus, Design Academy Eindhoven.

corn smut

Huitlacoche

This post was contributed by Fahma Bob, a student in my Mushrooms class, PLPA 319 For a gardener, Ustilago maydis can certainly be a little scary, especially if you don’t know what it is. Imagine going out to your sweet…

sooty blotch

Supermarket Mycology. Flyspeck disease of apples

People get fussy about their apples, and tend to reject them if they’re bruised, or have nasty fungal lesions on them. But flyspeck is a subtle disease, and you’ve probably eaten it many times. I have, and I’m none the worse for it. Here we visit two different apple diseases, flyspeck and sooty blotch, in full rotating glory.

Wallemia

The fungus in my maple syrup

“Last week an uninvited guest showed up for breakfast. As I poured maple syrup over my son’s waffle, Plop! A perfect dime-sized fungus colony spilled out to crown that waffle like a malevolent pat of butter.” Meet Wallemia sebi!

strawberries

When strawberries go bad

What could be better than succulent fruit, rotting in time lapse? And doesn’t everyone want to know more about the fungi that rot strawberries? These are rhetorical questions.

before...

Lemon lapse time rot

Moldy lemons aren’t victims of just any mold–they have their own specific pair of evil parasites. Here a lemon succumbs to one of those evil Penicillium twins, in time lapse.

About

Most people don't pay much attention to fungi, which include things like mushrooms, molds, yeasts, and mildews. Here at Cornell we think they're pretty fascinating. In fact, even the most disgusting foot diseases and moldy strawberries are dear to our hearts. We'd like to talk to you about fungi, so that like us, you too can tell gross stories at the dinner table. Afterwards, maybe you'll notice some things you would have overlooked before, and we think this could be good for the planet.

Kathie T. Hodge, Editor

Beneath Notice, our book of borescopic mycology.

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