Morel mycelium reverts to an incompetent form, when conditions cause it to deteriorate. The incompetent form is thin, slow growing and dark colored.

On agar plates, the reversion usually occurs after the third subculture, if subculturing is done early, while the mycelium is strong and vigorously growing. The incompetent mycelium never reverts back to vigorously growing mycelium.

The cause of the reversion may be dehydration of the mycelium, but this point is not clearly indicated. Morel mycelium will not tolerate dehydration as well as other fungal mycelium does. High humidity appears to sustain vigorous mycelial growth longer before reversion occurs.

The presumed function of the mechanism is to prevent growth where it cannot succeed, such as on the surface of the ground. With other mushrooms, light sensitivity often serves that purpose.

Therefore, when doing critical tests, I take inoculum from the plate on which the germinating spore is grown. Never more than one germinating spore is allowed on plates which are used for inoculum, because different spores each produce their own strain variants which compete with each other and set up a barrier between each other.

Other Morchella researchers usually subculture their inoculum numerous times, which means they study incompetent mycelium rather than vigorously growing mycelium.

However, when sclerotia is used as inoculum, it starts as vigorously growing mycelium. More comparative work needs to be done to determine what changes might occur when sclerotia forms and whether it maintains the same spore strain variations.
 

---

ÝÝÝÝ

7. Abnormal Morphology

Morchella has the unprecedented characteristic of producing abnormal morphology under certain growing conditions. When the Ower procedure is used to grow morels, large morels acquire a smooth surface rather than the usual ridges, which causes them to look like balloons. Small morels produce a normal appearing morphology.

A photograph of large, abnormal appearing morels grown by the Ower procedure is shown in a magazine article titled "Taming the Wild Morel" in Discover magazine, May 1988, 9:58-60. The surface of the morels had smooth wrinkles rather then normal ridges. The growers were trying to produce very large morels, which would usually be called Morchella crasipies.

The morphology of mushrooms, like any other organisms, is usually under rigid genetic control, while environmental and nutritional factors have little influence upon morphology beyond size. But the morphology of Morchella is not under strict genetic control, because it has undergone very recent and rapid change. The anomaly on agar media also demonstrates how radically its morphology can vary.

If Morchella had evolved from a species which had complex morphology, that morphology would be rigidly locked in place through genetic control causing variations to occur in a more limited, gradual and stable manner. But Morchella evolved from a yeast which did not have complex morphology, and therefore, all of the complexity of the morel morphology was newly derived and not highly stabilized genetically. Such genetically unstable morphology is presumably unknown elsewhere in science. Polymorphism is not unknown, but it is different being genetically stable and functional.

Morphology would be determined largely by the sequence in which genes are read. The sequence appears to get mixed up easily for Morchella creating strange morphology. This result can easily occur, because the genes themselves do not have to change, and environmental conditions appear to influence the ability to get the sequence right.
 

---

ÝÝÝÝ

8. Errors in Morchella Research

Errors in Morchella research were implicitly and explicitly addressed in the research material, which can be difficult for some persons to read; so I'll describe them in simpler terms here.

The most significant error deals with gene exchange. Supposedly, gene exchange is promoted between spore strains through a structural mechanism which mycologists call a barrage or meld. I call it a barrier, because much evidence indicates that its function is to wall off mycelium and prevent gene exchange from occurring. The structure looks like a thin line of fuzzy growth that forms between different types of morel mycelium on agar plates.

Gene exchange is common in filamentous fungi, and it normally results in an invisible merging of mycelium rather than a zone of unusual growth.

Another important point is that the walled off mycelium in the interaction zone of morel mycelium would starve, because surrounding nutrients are used up by the original mycelium. Yet in the erroneous analysis, the interaction zone is supposed to contain the all-important mycelium which forms the mushrooms. Its growth characteristics show that it does nothing but die off.

Closely related to that error is the claim that the reason why so many spore strains form with Morchella is because gene exchange creates them. However, gene exchange does not create differences; it destroys differences by homogenizing gene pools. Genetic differences are created through mutations and evolution in diverse environments which keep the different types separated.

The unprecedented number of variants of Morchella, both genotypic and phenotypic, indicate very restricted gene exchange, because gene exchange would destroy the differences through homogenization.

Morchella restricts gene exchange at this time, because it became dependent upon phenotypic variations for adaptation purposes, while it was a yeast. Eventually, it will give up phenotypic adaptations in favor of normal evolution. But Morchella has not been evolving long enough for good alternatives to be created for its phenotypic adaptations.
 

---

ÝÝÝÝ

9. Historical Perspectives on Morchella Research

Around the turn of the century, Molliard worked with apple compost getting a few morels to grow; but he did not describe the procedure. Since then, better composts have been developed. The problem with composts is that they require aging, usually outdoors. The research described here explains why. Bacteria must grow first, so the mycelium can feed on them. Nonbacterial nutrients can be used; but under natural conditions, competitors become a problem.

Another thing Molliard did was claim to have observed a conidial stage for Morchella. What he saw was clearly a leaf mold and should not have been viewed so uncritically by other scientists. Besides the absurdity of any mushroom producing conidia (microscopic spore structures), the only basis was dead leaves producing a conidial growth on top of morel compost, which a leaf mold would be expected to do.

Over the next few decades, cytological work was done; and then nutritional studies began. The nutritional studies were extremely crude, which might have been expected at the preliminary stages a half century ago; but they never advanced beyond that level. The primary reason is that mycologists have no significant contact with microbial nutrition and did not know how to study or evaluate that subject. They have some contact with plant nutrition, studying in botany and plant pathology departments; but that area is almost totally irrelevant to microbial nutrition.

The approach that was taken with Morchella nutrition was to list nutrients and put a dry weight measurement with each one—nothing more; no explanation, interpretations or applications. The problem is, nutrition is a product of physiology and cannot be separated from the entire physiology of the organism. The primary concern is growth characteristics. This subject is complex and highly developed in microbiology; but mycologists had no familiarity with it.

For example, the growth of microorganisms follows a characteristic curve starting with a lag phase, then an exponential phase and ending with a stationary or death phase. Therefore, rate of growth must be measured during the exponential phase using timed measurements after the lag phase. Otherwise, there is no indication of what caused the growth to stop. Usually, with Morchella, acid or alkali stops growth within a few days, unless certain types of organic nitrogen are used.

Another concern is concentration. The mycologists used nitrogen at one fifth its optimum level, and they did not do tolerance tests to determine what concentration they should use. If they would have tried to, they would have run into the problem that the interacting factors are so complex that a few simple test do not solve the nutritional problems.

Since mycologists got Morchella mycelium to grow for awhile, they assumed there was no nutritional problem; and therefore, there must be a life cycle problem in producing morel mushrooms. But in fact, the problem is entirely nutritional, as demonstrated by the work described here.

In 1982, the first laboratory morel was produced by Ronald Ower, a noncurrent student at San Francisco State University. It was no coincidence that he was not a professor or graduate student. They do not have time for applied morel research with all of its unknowns and the failures that go with them. However, professors often dabble with morel mycelium trying to get someone to spend some time with it, which is how I got started on it—a professor talked me into it (in 1980). I do the work in a farmhouse which has advantages with bulky and messy cultures.

The Ower procedure consists of growing sclerotia in large quantities; placing it in a nonsterile container; covering it with something like peat moss; and watering and aerating until morels come up. This is a gardeners approach, not a result of nutritional or physiological studies.

So the assumption was that Ower cracked the life cycle problem of morels. Supposedly, morels must grow from sclerotia in a life cycle sequence. This claim looks preposterous. It is illogical and contradicts the evidence.

First, the morels do not grow from sclerotia; they grow from mycelium. The mycelium grows for several weeks from the sclerotia before morels grow from the mycelium—in the Ower procedure and in the wild. What relevance could there be to the mycelium starting from sclerotia several weeks earlier.

Since the mycelium grows from the sclerotia, it demonstrates that the sclerotia functions as a source of nutrients. So why wouldn't the significance be nutritional, which has a logic, rather than generational, which has no logic. Eventually, the patent holders said that they could produce morels from mycelium without sclerotia, which demonstrates that there is no life cycle significance. (Patent 4,866,878. (4:10-25) Ower, Mills and Malachowski. 1989)

The unnaturalness of the Ower procedure is demonstrated by its inability to form normal morphology for the morels, when they are large. The large morels look like balloons, having a smooth surface rather than normal ridges. Logic indicates that the reason is because the mycelium cannot extend far enough before it must be forced into induction. Depletion of nutrients causes induction to occur prematurely, because the sclerotia cannot sustain nutrition for a long enough time.

Other mushrooms would not produce an abnormal morphology under suboptimal conditions; but Morchella has only rudimentary control over morphology because of its very recent and drastic evolution.

In the Ower procedure, sclerotia serves the purpose of providing soluble nutrients in a nonsterile medium, where competitors would overrun the culture, if other types of nonsterile, soluble nutrients were used. But sclerotia is inefficient to produce as a source of nutrients, which reduces the practicality of the procedure.

Therefore, morels have to be grown under sterile conditions, so liquid nutrients can be added. Automation is necessary, because the liquid has to be added at timed intervals. The same automation is needed for growing Agaricus (button mushrooms), so corn syrup can be used as a nutrient instead of composted livestock manure. All soil type mushrooms could be grown with automation technology which allows total control of the physiology.