(Daejeon=Yonhap News) Reporter Park Joo-young = The National Institute of Forest Science announced on the 12th that it has successfully achieved three consecutive years of mushroom growth in the fire-damaged areas of Goseong County, Gangwon Province, using its research results on artificial cultivation with infected mushroom seedlings.
The National Institute of Forest Science transplanted 27 infected mushroom seedlings in 2007 to restore the mushroom mountains in the Goseong area, which was damaged by a large-scale wildfire in 1996.
Since the first mushroom occurrence (5 individuals) in 2023, one individual last year and 11 individuals this year have been additionally confirmed, proving the stability of the artificial cultivation technology.
DNA analysis results confirmed that the genetic type of the mushrooms in Goseong, where the mushrooms occurred, and the genetic type of the infected mushroom test site were the same, proving that the infected mushroom seedlings directly contributed to the actual mushroom occurrence.
Meanwhile, in the test site for infected mushroom seedlings in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province, mushrooms have been occurring continuously for nine years from 2017 to this year, since they first occurred in 2010.
In particular, this year, 27 new mushrooms occurred, which is an increase of about 58.8% compared to last year (17 individuals).
Park Eung-joon, head of the Forest Microbiology Utilization Research Division, said, "The occurrence of mushrooms was facilitated by appropriate temperature and moisture conditions during the mushroom occurrence period, as well as forest management such as thinning and pruning," and "In the future, we will expand the dissemination of technology to promote the creation of mushroom mountains and contribute to improving the income of forestry workers."