That’s very interesting Malte! I thought about this problem lately, because I also miss some opportunities when I’m traveling for example.
I have not much experience with spore prints. I tried my luck sometimes and succeeded, but often failed to get them clean or to germinate them. I would love to hear more input and expertise about that topic!
But I thought of cloning, related to the distilled water tek:
I think of two parts in the procedure. The first one is in open conditions, not sterile (e.g. in the forest). The second step is cleaning it up at home in the lab (sterile).
Procedure would go like this:
IN THE FOREST (UNSTERILE)
- Cut out a piece of tissue from the inside, like you would when cloning a mushroom at home.
If possible take quiet a big piece from the inner tissue, so you can later proceed it in the lab and maybe cut it again there. If the species is too small just take a clean part with vivid looking tissue.
- Put that sample into distilled water and seal it in a small and practicable airtight container for transportation.
Optional: I don’t know if adding something to the water like hydrogen peroxide is helpful. I have no experience with using it and maybe it harms the genetics?
AT THE LAB (STERILE)
-
Take out the (bigger) sample tissue from the distilled water and rip it apart. Now take again tissue from the “inside”-inside, like you would do in step 1. If the sample tissue was big enough and you get the chance to take tissue from the inside of this sample tissue, in theory this would be 100% clean. The smaller the sample or the species the harder this gets.
Anyway, even if it is a small sample you can still try to clean it up on agar, which I did often.
-
put on agar and clone
Thoughts:
- Don’t know how tropical species need or want to be refrigerated, or if the container gets too hot while further traveling?
- How long is it safe to store the culture, because sample is not sterile?
- Security at the airport / legal issues
- If there is bacteria and the tissue in the distilled water at the same time, what happens . Maybe nothing, maybe it’s bad.
Well, just my thought on that, which is for now just a theory :). Anyway good look with stacking up the strain collection, really exciting!
P.S.:
If the mushroom is unknown, I would document it with pictures as much as possible (habitat, close up, gills, cross-section)… Otherwise it might get really hard to ID later.