21st Century Guidebook to Fungi

In this chapter we examine the biotechnology that uses intact living organisms to produce commercially important products. In the main this means fungal fermentations in submerged liquid cultures, so we describe in detail the essential aspects of cultivating fungi: media, oxygen demand and supply, and fermenter engineering. We describe fungal growth patterns in liquid cultures; fermenter growth kinetics; growth yield; the stationary phase; and growth as pellets.

Beyond the batch culture, we discuss fed-batch methods, chemostats and turbidostats. Then we look towards the industrial scene and examine the uses of submerged fermentations, with the specific examples: alcoholic fermentations; citric acid biotechnology; penicillin and other pharmaceuticals; enzymes for fabric conditioning and processing, and food processing; steroids and use of fungi to make chemical transformations; the Quorn™ fermentation and evolution in fermenters; and the production of spores and other inocula. We hark back to ruminant digestion to consider the ‘engineering aspects’ of natural digestive fermentations in herbivores, and try to work out just how many anaerobic fungi we are cultivating in our livestock.

Many of the most important commercial (particularly food) fermentations take place in the solid state. So we look in a little more detail at the digestion of lignocellulosic residues, and then turn to our major foods: bread, cheese and salami manufacture; and soy sauce, tempeh and other food products, with a few comments about products like chocolate, coffee and even tea, which, though few people realise this, all depend on fermentation processes.