Submerged Culture of Edible and Medicinal Mushroom Mycelia and Their Applications in Food Products: A Review

Edible mushrooms have rich nutrition (e.g., proteins, dietary fibers, polysaccharides) and they can be potential sources of important ingredients in food processing. However, the cultivation of mushroom fruiting bodies needs a relatively long time period and they can be easily polluted during the growth process. At the same time, a lot of labor and larger planting area are also required. As we all known, submerged fermentation is a good way to produce edible mushroom mycelia with less environmental pollution and small footprint, which are also rich in nutrition and bioactive components that are used as dietary supplements or health care products in food industry. Therefore, it can be considered that the replacement of edible mushroom fruiting bodies with edible mushroom mycelia produced through submerged fermentation have great application potential in food production. At present, most of the researches about edible mushroom mycelia focus on the production of bioactive metabolites in fermentation liquid, but there are few reports concentrate on their applications in food. This paper reviews the research progress of submerged culture of edible mushroom mycelia and their applications in food products for attracting more attention of human beings.