Medicinal Mushroom Mycelia: Characteristics, Benefits, and Utility in Soybean Fermentation

Abstract

The medicinal value of mushrooms is long known, but there is increasing awareness of their health benefits and interest in utilizing these in diet as food or nutritional supplement. In this chapter, we discuss the characteristics of 20 wild mushrooms and results from our work on their antioxidant activity, ability to promote nerve growth factor (NGF) synthesis and to convert the glycosylated forms of isoflavones to usable aglycon forms in soybeans fermented with their mycelia. Of the 20 mushroom types, we found that Hericium ramosum (H. ramosum) mycelia had higher antioxidant activity and showed greater capability for increasing the levels of aglycons, such as daidzein, glycitein, and genistein when used for fermentation of soybeans. In general, soybeans fermented with mushrooms increased the levels of aglycons compared to non-fermented ones. Taken together, all these results suggest that mushroom mycelia have a huge potential to be used as food and nutritional supplements for the health benefits they offer and present the prospects for utilizing them in soybean fermentation as natural resources for the large-scale production of aglycons.

Immunostimulatory Effect of Postbiotics Prepared from Phellinus linteus Mycelial Submerged Culture via Activation of Spleen and Peyer’s Patch in C3H/HeN Mice

“…In addition to their therapeutic efficacy, medicinal mushrooms have been proposed as promising ingredients for safe stimulation of the immunity of the human body [ 22 ]. This knowledge, coupled with the recent advancements in cultivation technologies, the mycelial production under submerged cultivation and its utilization as a postbiotic ingredient, has attracted attention as a promising technology that can potentially produce functional and nutritional supplements and serve as immunomodulating agents [ 9 , 23 ].…”