As far as I am aware, there has only been one other book about fungal nutrition. This contrasts very markedly with the large number of books devoted to the nutrition of higher plants. Here, we have a coherent field of study, well established through the need to understand how plant yield might be increased through the provision of inorganic nutrients. The economic benefits of an effective fertiliser regime for an agricultural or horticultural crop have been an important driving force for establishing plant nutrition as an identifiable discipline in plant physiology. But this identity for plant nutrition is aided in general germs by the fact that the higher plant has a specific organ, the root, for absorbing nutrients and the effectiveness of that organ can be determined by observable responses in other parts of the plant, such as change in shape and colour.

Fungal nutrition is clearly about what kinds and amounts of nutrients will support growth or bring about differentiation, whether it be secondary metabolism on reproductive structures. However, to focus on fungal nutrition thus described would be to produce recipes and little else. This book is about the nutrition of fungi as a web of processes, attempting to provide a mechanistic basis for the subject.