Intellectual and culinary communion with mushrooms-An unique first hand expert Goan ethno-Termitomycophilic experience
As if SHE had heard my prayers, the Mother Earth suddenly began blessing me by producing bountiful crops of edible Termitomyces mushrooms at my common house at Bondir, Santa Cruz, a phenomenon which I had never seen for 40+ years…… See the latest crops (august 2010) which I managed to save for filming and study Crops inside our garden http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrujRm8ClPI Crops over larger area http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYxrIy9yOKo The latest record shows that since September 2008, I have now three species-Termitomyces globulus, Termitomyces robustus and Termitomyces petaloides sp.nov. all from an area of less than 300 sq.mts….. My garden then became a living mycological laboratory for me, having done still and videophotography of the fruiting phenomena since 2008 and also detail biological studies in our mycology laboratory at Goa university… The videoclips at least those loaded on You Tube are certainly the only videos so far available on this genus and species from anywhere in the world!. Filming on the spot without professional gear was difficult.. more so at night… Last year we found a novel species –Termitomyces petaloides sp. Nov, Kamat, Desouza and Priolkar under finalization…we are sending it to either Mycological research (UK), Fungal diversity (Hong Kong) or Mycotaxon (USA) … Imagine, a novel mushroom species , new to science from one’s garden… That was not all.. Mother Earth was challenging me with new questions and puzzles… I had spotted nocturnal activity of land snails on these mushrooms. This year I videofilmed it. This adds a new dimension to our current understanding of the tropical food chains…watch these three short clips, the only such films in world/India, so far…we are studying biological and ecological significance of this trophic behaviour and the results would be published separately http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K50jgt4e0no http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj3JPmei_CU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c6COLE6KTM Besides, after such a bumper crop after taking care to leave behind half the mushrooms for maintenance of the ecosystem and to permit the termite workers to reinoculate their fungal combs.. why not have a feast? See our collection used for consumption as well as scientific studies…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLwrB4au7X8 Goa has a rich tradition of Ethomycophagy… We cook at least 50 recipes from wild edible mushrooms… So after harvesting the crop from my garden I interviewed my wife Melinda on the culinary art of cooking these wonderful species… How to cook “olamis” –some tips from Melinda…this is just glimpse, there is more to come on this delicious subject http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ0eGwaSz1I The intellectual and culinary communion would continue…we expect a few more crops in September, then probably in December and early January… -- Dr. Nandkumar Kamat, GOA