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Mushrooms in the medicine cabinet?
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- Created on Wednesday, 15 December 2010 04:25
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ST. PAUL, Minn. - Can the tasty mushroom help fight cancer?
That's a deliciously appealing question a team of University of Minnesota researchers hope to answer within five years.
"It's impossible to predict the outcome, but we may find novel compounds that haven't been considered by pharmaceutical companies for their anti-cancer attributes," said Bryn Dentinger, a graduate student in the university's department of plant biology and a member of the research team.
While mushrooms have pretty much remained a delicacy in the United States, they have a long medical history in other parts of the world.
The Chinese and Japanese used mushrooms for centuries to treat a variety of illnesses, including cancer. The Romans also used mushrooms for medicinal purposes. Back in the 1950s, New York's famed Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center discovered that mushrooms may have strong anti-cancer activities, but then quickly dropped the research project for reasons unknown.
Magic mushrooms are cash crop
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- Created on Wednesday, 15 December 2010 04:22
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The mushrooms are produced in clinical conditions
Ellen Timiney's home, on an otherwise ordinary Plymouth street, is a haven for hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Step inside her Plymouth flat and you are greeted by the moistness which mushrooms demand.
She has turned the burgeoning demand for the fungi into a business, by growing magic mushrooms for sale.
Ms Timiney grows them legally, then distributes the crop to cafes and shops across the South West.
It is part of a retail boom in the psychedelic fungi which have a similar effect to LSD.NASA engineer wants to share mushroom cultivation formula
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- Created on Wednesday, 15 December 2010 04:19
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CADILLAC - Michigan farmers always can use another crop to generate cash and a former NASA engineer wants to help them.
Donald Alger, who retired from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, spent almost 25 years experimenting in its laboratories, in his spare time, to develop a way to grow Shiitake mushrooms using pine trees from land he owns near his native Manton. The Michigan Department of Transportation took part of his property for U.S. 131 and now his dreams of operating a mushroom-growing business are gone.
"They refused to offer any compensation for our treated pine trees, so we took them to court," he said. "We will not be able to commercially produce the Shiitake mushrooms on our Manton farm because MDOT has destroyed the very center of the 40-acre track."
The trees were treated with his secret formula that would allow mushrooms to grow on pine, which naturally has anti-bodies against fungus.
Farmer smells profit in gourmet fungi
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- Created on Wednesday, 15 December 2010 04:16
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Denzil Sturgiss grew up on a property in the rugged headwaters of the Shoalhaven River and until about six years ago had never heard of truffles.
He has still never tasted the great French delicacy used to flavour gourmet food, but hopes it will generously fund his retirement. Mr Sturgiss, 60, is one of the small band of NSW farmers who have taken a punt on producing one of the world's most elusive and expensive food items.
Australian truffle farming has been pioneered by Duncan Garvey's Perigord Truffles of Tasmania, which hopes to export the pungent black fungus from Australia to the world at premium prices when they are unavailable from their native Europe.
Six ways mushrooms can save the world by Paul Stamets
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- Created on Tuesday, 04 May 2010 07:02
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Paul Stamets a well known Mycologist talks about six ways that fungus can save the world.