Edible Oyster Mushroom Workshop at FabCafe Kuala Lumpur

FabCafe Kuala Lumpur held a fun, hands-on workshop where participants learned how to grow edible oyster mushrooms at home!

The workshop was held in collaboration with Dr. Chan Pick Kuen from Blooming Mushrooms, who has worked as Senior Research Officer at the Agro-Biotechnology Institute of Malaysia. Dr. Chan has a lot of experience in growing and cultivating all sorts of edible mushrooms such as the ever popular oyster mushrooms, but also reishi and lion’s mane, among many others!

The present workshop was born out of FabCafe Kuala Lumpur’s explorations of mycelium as a regenerative future material. Mushrooms are classified as fungi and mycelium is actually the root structure of the fungi that usually grows underground while the mushroom itself is the fruiting body of the fungi. In recent years, diverse applications for fungi as sustainable organic leather or construction materials have caught our attention, and we are looking into incorporating these new materials to our fabrication services and workshops.

For example, in the FabMeetup KL Vol.2 : Mushroom. Material. Future. we invited Mycotech, a bio-tech startup from Bandung, Indonesia, to share their experiences creating high-performance materials by using agricultural wastes of mushroom farming while empowering the farmers at the same time.

This time we invited participants to grow edible oyster mushrooms on their own, and helped them understand the lifecycle of mushrooms and the infinite possibilities and benefits they present as both a delicious source of food and a future material.

We started the workshop with a short lecture followed by learning how to culture tissue on a store-bought grey oyster mushroom and then placing it in a PDA (potato dextrose agar) media in a petri dish. 

After doing tissue culture, we also made a mushroom block using sterile sawdust mix as a substrate and yellow oyster mushroom spawn (the genetic material used to grow mushrooms) that had been grown in grain substrate. This mushroom block will be left in a dark place for 1-2 months until mycelium has covered the whole bag. After that, we will be able to induce the oyster mushroom to fruit. 

It was truly a fun and educational workshop experience with participants of all ages and backgrounds! 

Participants mentioned that culturing the tissue of the oyster mushroom was most exciting to them. Apart from that, Dr. Chan also showed a fascinating small table she grew from mycelium. It sparked a lot of curiosity about how the table was created or grown!

Are you interested in exploring together the future uses of mushrooms?

Contact us at info.kl@fabcafe.com! We would love to hear from you.