Mushroom Liquid Culture Syringes
So, I'm just getting ready to uh uptake some of this liquid culture that was just inoculated not too long ago, a couple weeks ago. So, I got these liquid culture syringes that I use are they're just longer needles. They're like 3 and 1/4 in. So, So, perfect for sucking up uh liquid out of a jar. And I'll just get some of these uh fully colonized cultures.
So, you could see the mycelium has pretty uh It's taking over the liquid quite a bit. Now, you can see a nice nice mass of mycelium in there. I'll go ahead and start agitating the mycelium, making it easier to take up into our syringes. I just have a bunch of these syringes. Kind of just get everything a nice spray down with some of isopropyl alcohol.
Also spray down my liquid culture lids. All the cultures have been colonizing within the positive pressured laboratory 100% of the time. So, they've never left the lab after inoculation. And I have the syringe caps. These have been autoclaved or pressure cooked.
So, they're completely sterile. I use these to cap up the syringe at the end of the process. It's a back tie incinerator. So, it's just a tool that you can utilize to sterilize scalpels, syringes, and also like inoculation loops. So, generally it'll heat up to like around 1,800°.
So, it's pretty hot in there. And uh when you use it to sterilize something, you only need a few seconds. I actually just turned it on, so it does have a little warm-up time. It takes like a few minutes to get it to the temperature that you want it. But, if you don't have one of these, you could just use a a a torch.
That's what I used for a long time until uh uh I just ended up getting it because I wanted one. So, but it's nice. It helps save me uh time. Saves time in the lab instead of having to like reach and light up a torch or, you know, keep anything lit. This thing stays on the whole time and I can just use it as needed.
Written protocol
Southwest Mushrooms Genetic Library
The strains themselves, the same cultures used in this footage.
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So, yeah, I have the syringe in the jar. I'll just twirl it around. And then bring the liquid culture up in there. And just cap the syringe like that. And just kind of continue the process until all of the inoculant has been uptaken into syringes.
So, yeah, we can see a nice uh liquid culture full of uh white mycelium. So, this will just get inoculated into like a grain spawn bag or a jar and used to grow out your spawn. Uh each of these jars will make 40 Uh each of these syringes are about 12 cc's. So, a little bit over 40 syringes. So, I have 500 ml of inoculant in here.
And yeah, each jar turns out to quite a bit. With each of these syringes, you can inoculate hundreds of more jars of liquid culture. Or each syringe can inoculate uh 12 lb of grain spawn. Um you can expand it several different kinds of ways. You can use the liquid culture to drop a drop a drop on a petri dish to grow out the culture that way.
And then from there, you can make much more liquid culture to make more grain spawn. And really just stretch it as far as you can. Also, these liquid cultures are really good for anybody that uh is just using a still air box or inoculating without a lab. They can flame sterilize sterilize the needle and just go directly into the uh grain spawn at that point. So, if I intake the liquid culture into the syringe and I notice that there's too much air in it, then I'll just shoot it back into the jar and re- uh retake the inoculant.
Uh just because we want the syringe to be full. We just want the smallest air bubble in the syringe. That way, right before you proceed to inoculation, you can shake the syringe and then that way the mycelium is able to break up and be evenly distributed and suspended throughout the liquid culture. And uh that gives it, you know, more dispersion and even distribution when you're going ahead and inoculating a grain spawn or whatever you're doing. So, yeah, I like to have that little little bubble of sterile air just in the syringe, but if it's like a whole cc of air, then I'll definitely shoot it back into the jar and just retake the liquid uh at that point.
Yeah. So, yeah, that's it for one jar of uh master liquid culture. I can wash the the jar out, wash the lid, and just reuse the components. So, that's it. I'll just go through and do this for every jar.
I think I have about 20 of them to do today. 22, so yeah, about 800 syringes. So, it's a really uh really cool process. Yeah, very nice and uh good way to yeah, keep the mushroom mycelium uh in the library. And yeah, just a great piece of growing inoculant.
Uh yeah, it's good to have. Yeah, so yeah, we'll uh go ahead and inoculate one of the sterile grain bags with the liquid culture for the blue green oyster. So, I'll get myself ready to do a quick little inoculation. Just grab a little paper towel. And uh you you could do this in front of a flow hood or without a flow hood in front of a uh in a still air box or you know, just make sure if you don't if you don't have a still air box you can just do it in a home without the with the air conditioning off.
So, I'll just wipe the injection port real good. And I will douse the syringe tip into a little bit of isopropyl. I'll go ahead and bring that out. Remove the cap from the syringe. Go ahead and put the cap on.
So, now I have a nice syringe. You can go ahead and just do a nice little simple uh shake like that by beating it on the surface or edge of a table. That really breaks up the mycelium real nice. And uh usually uh I would usually use a lighter or a torch just to torch the uh end of the syringe until it's glowing red hot. But, I'll use the back tie zapper just to be sure as I stick the needle through the injection port if there's any potential contamination that goes onto the needle then it's instantly uh met with heat.
So, that's just a little practice that I like to do. The needle's really hot. I'll let it cool for a second in front of the sterile air flow. Go right in. First drop of inoculant cools down the tip of the syringe real well.
But, I like to just go throughout the the bag and just shoot the inoculant towards the edges. And that'll basically do it. Um You can do one to two bags with uh with 10 to 12 cc syringe. I'll let this uh In the next couple of days, we'll just see the mycelium start to form. And when it reaches about 30 to 50% colonization, then I'll go ahead and agitate the mycelium.
Shake it up. Uh I'll go ahead and label this. It's the BO15. It's the blue oyster. There we go.
It's uh inoculated right through the injection port. The injection port seals back up, so the hole disappears, and you can allow this to colonize nice and safely. So, yeah.