Now imagine a ballroom filled with booths promoting cookbooks, protein and computers. Put the two together and you have the 35th Annual Mushroom Short Course and the 4th Specialty Mushroom Workshop, held Monday, Tuesday and yesterday at the Nittany Lion Inn. The extravaganza welcomed growers, suppliers and other activists in the mushroom industry. Growers proclaimed different mixes of raw materials, fresh air and improved employee morale as the answer to getting more mushrooms for less dollars. We don't always understand how or why what we do works.
Mushrooms are the sign that a fungus has no more room to grow.
A fungus is really a mass of thread-like structures that absorb nutrients from their environment. But mushrooms aren't just the white bulbs named agaricus and packaged in plastic wrap at the grocery store. They come in varieties as diverse as shiitake and pleurotus, which are both grown at the University's Mushroom Research Center. They're easier to pick this way. Agricultural economist Shannon Hamm told grim-faced growers that the overall demand for fresh mushrooms may be decreasing.