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Lightning-powered mushrooms could boost food yields
New research reveals that mushrooms and some vegetables multiply rapidly when struck by lightning.

By

Bryan Nelson
Fri, Apr 09 2010 at 11:20 PM
 23

FRANKENSHROOMS: When struck by lightning, mushrooms multiply rapidly. (Photo: alllyballly/Flickr)

Japanese farming lore has long observed that plentiful mushroom harvests tend to follow thunderstorms. Now researchers at Iwate University in northern Japan have confirmed the legend, finding that some mushrooms more than double their yields when jolted by electricity.
 
The results could lead to new harvesting methods that would significantly increase food production. That's good news for a Japanese food industry where mushrooms are a popular staple, and where around 50,000 tons of mushrooms must be imported a year, mainly from China and South Korea, just to meet the high demand.
 
The study reached its conclusions after four years of bombarding mushrooms with artificially induced lightning, reports National Geographic. Ten varieties of mushroom were tested, and eight of those species responded by growing at an increased rate when electrified. The fungi reacted best when exposed to between 50,000 and 100,000 volts for one ten-millionth of a second.
 
Researchers were able to get the shiitake crop to yield double the amount usually harvested, but the best performing species were nameko mushrooms, which produced a whopping 80 percent more mushrooms.
 
As for why the mushrooms multiply when powered by lightning, researchers can only hypothesize at this point. But it's possible the mushrooms are giving themselves a reproductive boost in response to danger, said Yuichi Sakamoto, one of the study's chief researchers. Initially, the mushrooms are damaged by the electrical bursts, but they compensate quickly by increasing protein and enzyme secretion.
 
The next step for researchers is to develop machines for farmers that can deliver carefully controlled lightning-like bursts to their mushroom harvests. "We want to collaborate with commercial mushroom farmers and eventually commercialize this technology," said Koichi Takaki, an associate professor in engineering at Iwate University.
 
The prospects are so good that the Iwate team is testing to see if other crops also respond to lightning in this way. So far, radish, rapeseed, beans and some varieties of lily are showing increased growth rates when the proper electric current is applied.

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Comments: 23
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anonymous
vedette Mar 31 2011 at 12:22 PM

This sounds so interesting. What's the procedure involve to 'electrify' the fungi? How are the plants hooked up to electricity?

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myrddin's picture
myrddin Feb 11 2011 at 8:02 AM

I think I'll get a taser and test the hypothesis out in my garden.

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anonymous
jay i Feb 09 2011 at 4:21 PM

I don't get this, wouldn't the mushroom be blown apart by a bolt of lightning? It seems that way when a tree is struck.

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anonymous
Alec Feb 09 2011 at 12:32 PM

Or is my math just wrong... Maybe they are just being sarcastic?

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anonymous
BrentB Feb 25 2011 at 8:25 PM

Double IS indeed more than 80%. -_-

100% more = 2x
80% more = 1.8x

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anonymous
Rob Feb 13 2011 at 5:40 PM

Yeah, way to math good sir. This annoys me to no end. Someone needs to go back to grade school. When I see simple math errors like this it completely makes me lose faith in the rest of the article, and even website.

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anonymous
AA Feb 01 2011 at 1:37 AM

How interesting and amazing this post is! It is useful and helpful for me that I like it very much,and I am looking forward to hearing from your next.replica Watches

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estaples's picture
Em-j Staples May 25 2010 at 9:18 PM

This sounds so interesting. What's the procedure involve to 'electrify' the fungi? How are the plants hooked up to electricity? Through the roots? I'll be eager to follow this story and see what results from such shocking results

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anonymous
Uncle B Apr 11 2010 at 4:04 PM
Japan has a problem, they farm the sea and it is declining! can Japanese populations decline to match the food supply? America needs more mushrooms to replace the oil-dependent beef they eat right mow. Oil supplies are threatened in the U.S. by Asian counter-bids in Yuam for finite world oil supplies, and the Yuan will win out as the stronger, more stable currency! Massive population explosion the world has experienced will cause wars for food! Humans cannot waste the way Americans do and expect
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to survive - larger bodied Americans are to be condemned for their unsustainability! Their dollar falls like a stone, there agriculture is laced with corporate profiteering, and their very food supply is oil dependent as is their economy - they are becoming the "Fatted Calf's" of the world! Great highly productive mushroom farms may help these unfortunate animals to convert away from meat and towards a sustainable veggie diet before it is too late and they starve to death waiting in line at closed hamburger joints! All Humanity can benefit from the good nutrition found in mushrooms and veggies and grains and in an effort to continue the breed and in light of the Asian facts of life we must all, now, revert to the dieat of our ancestors - starting with veggies and rice, adding mushrooms and corn, and leave the beasts in the fields for milking and culling only! Exponential population growth deems this so!
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anonymous
meat Feb 06 2011 at 1:40 AM

"oil-dependent beef"? You stupid soyfcker, as long as we are alive humans will find a way to slaughter and devour tasty animals with or without oil. You think we will starve to death waiting in line at closed burger joints? Fck that, I'll throw a grenade into the forest and eat whatever gets thrown my way. So have fun being a malnourished skeleton your whole life I'm going to go enjoy a nice, protein-rich steak with the fresh blood of a live baby calf drizzled on top.

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anonymous
bothersaidpooh Apr 11 2010 at 12:59 PM

hmm.
maybe the tesla coil enthusiasts can try this?

would be an interesting experiment...

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anonymous
mycologist matthew Apr 11 2010 at 8:42 AM

If you want to see a mind blowing talk on fungi, go to this link and recognize...TESTIFY!

Google this:TED mushroom talk

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anonymous
Jeeves Meflonin Apr 11 2010 at 8:44 AM

Paul Stamets is incredible - this is definitely one of the best TED talks ever - who knew mushrooms could feed of RADIATION and etc etc. Good link bro.

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anonymous
borisky Apr 11 2010 at 8:38 AM

so if you zapped magic mushrooms you might also get twice the magic to - booyah [that's psylocibin for the stupidos

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anonymous
Jeremy Apr 11 2010 at 5:58 AM

Just what I was thinking Jack.

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anonymous
Jordan Graen Feb 14 2011 at 1:47 AM

Ugh, I can't even believe this article after that. How does a scientific article screw something like that up!? Also, which had a better yield? Was the shiitake actually 50% or was it 200%?!? I need to know now...

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anonymous
John Lau Apr 11 2010 at 5:14 AM

Why human can't grow stronger when electric-shocked for ten-millionth of a second!? I can't wait to see a mushroom farm with lightning effects! It's like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatball the movie. Tour accepted?

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anonymous
Jack Apr 11 2010 at 3:49 AM

"Researchers were able to get the shiitake crop to yield double the amount usually harvested, but the best performing species were nameko mushrooms, which produced a whopping 80 percent more mushrooms."

Surely doubling the yield of shiitake means a 100% increase, making it larger than the increase in nameko mushroom harvest?

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anonymous
Richard Wasserman Feb 01 2011 at 12:56 PM

This is an example of the poor results the American schools achieve. Or that the editing was done in India.

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anonymous
math Apr 11 2010 at 4:02 PM

it said "double the amount usually harvested" not double the amount of mushrooms.

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anonymous
Robert Feb 05 2011 at 10:49 AM
This is an interesting illustration of the way we learn math in this country. I read somewhere that using word problems to illustrate math which deal with slices of pepperoni pizza often led the test taker to focus on the taste of the pizza instead of a successful solution to the math problem...The two paragraphs taken together - from the original NG article - show that the author was indicating the best results with the Shitake mushroom: "We saw the best effects in shiitake and nameko mushrooms,
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while we also tested reishi mushrooms, which are not edible but are used in certain types of traditional Chinese medicine," he said. "Given the right amount of electricity, the shiitake crop yielded double the amount harvested from logs not exposed to an energy burst. The amped-up nameko logs produced 80 percent more mushrooms"
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anonymous
zizzl Apr 11 2010 at 5:58 AM

Doing math and zapping yourself with electricity at the same time isn't as easy as it sounds.

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anonymous
Retro Apr 11 2010 at 9:12 AM
Perhaps "80% more" was meant to mean four times again? For example, if you have 100 mushrooms after shocking when you would have had 20 normally, what the author meant but didn't properly phrase is '80 is 80% of the final 100 count that you would normally have had.' Seems very unlikely, though. Regardless, I'd be curious if the flavour or context of the mushrooms would change because of this, in the same way domestically raised strawberries don't have nearly the same level of mouth-popping flavour
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as their wild relatives. There has to be a practical limit to how much nutrition the mushrooms can pull out of their growth medium, and if all they're doing is increasing internal air space so they can grow faster, that'll just mean bigger mushrooms that are less nutritious and tasty.
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