ABSTRACT

Humanity's use of mushroom extents back to Paleolithic times. Few people even anthropologists comprehend how influential mushrooms have been in the course of human evolution. Mushrooms have played pivotal roles in ancient Greece, India and Mesoamerica. True to their beguiling nature, Fungi have always elicited deep emotional responses from adulation by those who understand them to outright fear by those who do not (Stament, 1993). According to Davis and Aegerter, (2000), a mushroom is the "fruit" of certain fungi, analogous to the apple on a tree. Most of the fungus goes unseen as it colonizes and absorbs nutrients from wood, fallen leaves and organic matter in soil. As a group, fungi can grow on almost any carbon source (a substrate). A fungus is composed of tubular, branched filaments known as hyphae (a mass of the individual hyphae is called a mycelium). Many fungi, including some that form mushrooms are saprophytes, obtaining their food by colonizing dea4 organic matter. If a mycelium thrives, it will eventually have enough energy to reproduce. When the combination of temperature, relative Humidity, carbon dioxide levels are just right, the fungus will develop a highly organized structure called a mushroom. The mushroom releases millions of spores, which function like the seeds of plants. A number of these saprophytic Fungi are cultivated for  edible mushrooms.