Diario del proyecto Bio 111 Wed 2:30 Group 2 (E, J, H)

One of the most common agricultural practices in the world is the harvesting of wheat grains to produce foods like bread, cereal, or pasta. Once the grains are removed, wheat straw is left over as a waste product; this wheat straw can then be used to produce bioethanol, which is an important biofuel that can be used as a substitute for gasoline. In this process, it's first necessary to break down lignin to access the sugar and produce ethanol through fermentation. In the past, the breakdown of lignin produced various waste products that interfered with the production of ethanol, but it has recently been found that Irpex lacteus, a fungus I observed on Mount-Royal, is capable of efficiently and selectively breaking down lignin without producing as many waste products, thus resulting in a fermentable sugar that can be converted into ethanol. Thus, it's possible that it will become common practice to use Irpex lacteus to produce bioethanol out of agricultural waste products.

The fungi I chose to research is the giant puffball (calvatia gigantea) which is most commonly found in Canada and the United States. These mushrooms are safe to eat and while some say they have no taste, others have described their taste as rich, earthy, and nutty. Harvesting these puffballs, people need to be careful not to misidentify another mushroom as the giant puffball, or eat one of the wrong age. Another use for giant puffballs is using it as medicine, which is not a common use today but was a common use of the Lakota tribe of Native Americans. The tribe used the dry spores to aid in blood clotting and as a way to protect the body from infections that could enter through cuts in the skin.