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Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 92: Beyond the Fruiting Body - Why Fungi Matter More Than We Think
Dr. Alfredo Justo, curator of botany and mycology at the New Brunswick Museum, unveils the mysterious world beneath our feet - the vast, largely undocumented kingdom of fungi. With backgrounds spanning Spain, the United States, and now Canada, Dr. Justo brings a wealth of expertise to our discussion about the cutting edge of fungal research.
Unlike plants and animals, fungi remain largely enigmatic because we rarely see the actual organisms themselves - only their fruiting bodies (mushrooms) that occasionally emerge. This fundamental challenge has left mycology decades behind other biological sciences. As Dr. Justo explains, studying fungi is like trying to understand plants by only examining their fruits, never seeing the plants themselves.
The conversation explores how DNA sequencing has revolutionized the field, allowing researchers to identify species with unprecedented accuracy. Through initiatives like the Fungal Diversity Survey (FunDIS) and MicroMap Atlantic Canada, scientists and citizen researchers are collaborating to document North America's fungal diversity. With over 70,000 mushroom specimens DNA barcoded so far, we're just beginning to understand the scope of fungal biodiversity.
Beyond taxonomy, we delve into fungi's remarkable potential applications. From mycorrhizal relationships that enhance forest health to bioremediation of contaminated soils, from pre-inoculated trees that produce edible mushrooms to promising medical compounds like those found in chaga and lion's mane, fungi offer solutions to some of our most pressing challenges.
Whether you're a nature enthusiast curious about participating in citizen science, an entrepreneur seeking innovative business opportunities, or simply someone fascinated by the natural world, this episode reveals how fungi connect all living systems. Connect with your local mycological society to join this growing community of mushroom enthusiasts making significant contributions to scientific understanding.
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Speaker 3:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest, use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of this strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people. That will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode, and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. Under the Canopy Well, good day all. As always, we always want to thank our listeners all across Canada, the states throughout the world, whether it's Switzerland, trinidad, tobago, ghana, caribbean, all those other places. We really appreciate you listening and should you at any time have any questions or would like to hear any podcasts or any clarification for anything, just let us know and we'll be more than happy to do what we can to get you on the program or to answer those things.
Speaker 3:Now I got to tell you here it is. It's late April here for the recording, mid-late April, and I was out this morning with the Chocolate Lab gunner checking my living apothecary, and I was out to see a number of the wild leek or ramp patches. I did some transplanting and started a patch a couple years ago two patches actually, where I take a gunner out for his run and one of them seems to have survived and doing quite well, but the other one doesn't seem to be doing so great, so I'll probably start a new patch somewhere else in this forest. Not only that, but the stinging nettle and all the other things that normally come up are starting to come up pretty good, so it's nice to see the ground is softening up a lot of moisture content, which is good. So for the indices for the rain, and it's just. You know, we get a large snow load, but it all depends on how it melts, indicates how the forest fire impact is going to be, because if we get a frozen ground with a fast melt and it's all just runoff, nothing seeps into the ground, but if you get a slow melt, it seeps into the ground and has a deeper moisture. Slow melt it seeps into the ground and has a deeper moisture content, which helps fight forest fires and it looks like it's pretty good for those sorts of things.
Speaker 3:Not only that, but I'm out with volvo here here at the recording studio and I got my new toy that we're using, trying something new, a new drone that we're going to try and use to see if we can locate Chaga and things along that line to make it a little easier in harvesting, because when you start Chagas only, as we mentioned before, only about 1 in 10,000 birch trees will produce one. You got to look or spend a lot of time looking, and while there's no leaves on the trees, I've got a drone to start identifying some locations. That'll be good for picking and I'm hoping that's going to ease up things, because we spend a lot of time in the bush looking. I don't mind that, but it gets to be quite demanding at some point where it's oh look, there's one over there and that's a kilometer away from where you initially started. But hopefully this drone will help out.
Speaker 3:Now today is our special guest. We have Alfredo Justo on the podcast. Well, good morning, alfredo, and thanks for coming on the podcast. Good morning, jeremy. Thanks for having me. I very much appreciate it. I know I think a number of your colleagues had suggested that we get together and talk. It's whether it was Greg Thorne or James Scott or a number of others, but a lot of great contacts. Now I have to tell you, alfredo, that receiving your information because we always do quite a bit of research for our podcasts and one of the things that I found was just like this is like old school days going through all the reports and the information, but I found it very informative and very interesting. So, alfredo, tell us a bit about yourself, what's your background, and give us a bit of understanding of who we're dealing with today.
Speaker 4:I'm a mycologist, so I study mushrooms. I'm originally from Spain, where I did my undergrad in biology and eventually my PhD. Then I moved to the States, to Worcester, Massachusetts, to Clark University, to do my postdoc. That happened at the very end of 2008. And I spent the last since then. I've been mostly on this side of the Atlantic. For a long time. I was a postdoc at Clark University, Then I had a research position in Mexico for a year, Then eventually we went back to the States and since 2019, I work at the New Brunswick Museum in St John, New Brunswick, where I'm the curator of botany and mycology.
Speaker 3:Oh, very good, so you've been there since for about six years now, correct, yes, yeah, about six years. Tell us a bit about what you do there and what's involved at this location.
Speaker 4:Well, the New Brunswick Museum is the provincial museum for New Brunswick and as such we collect and preserve and do research and do interpretation on everything that relates to the human history and the natural history of New Brunswick and a lot of the times also adjacent regions and as part of the natural history department. What we do every day kind of depends if we're during field season or not, because, as you can guess, with natural history we do spend a lot of time in the field when is the time to do more collections, but when it's time in the field we spend a lot of time just collecting. In my case, mushrooms is at the center of my research, but I also take care again of the botany and mycology collection, so that that includes plants, lichens, bryophytes, algae, anything that is botanical or mycological in any way, and we also have other colleagues in the natural history department. We have a curator of zoology and then we have a curator of paleontology, so mostly animals or fossils. So we cover all aspects of natural history Very interesting.
Speaker 3:So tell us, how do you find a big difference between New Brunswick and Spain?
Speaker 4:Well, I'm from northern Spain that's something that a lot of people have in mind sunny Mediterranean Spain. I'm from rainy Atlantic Spain. I'm from the northwest. I'm from rainy Atlantic Spain. I'm from the Northwest, just very close to Portugal, so my part of Spain is actually pretty rainy. The climate that we have there is actually pretty similar to the Pacific Northwest region of North America. We do get warmer and drier summers, but it's very rainy. We get a lot of rain from the Atlantic. So, as I told you, I've been in New England for 10 years before moving to Canada, so that kind of prepared me for the Canadian winters. But yeah, no, it's very different, but I see some similarities. I see some similarities and, especially, being back on the Atlantic coast again, my hometown in Spain is right on the coast in the Atlantic. So there are some similarities.
Speaker 3:Very interesting. So when you say the summers are warmer, how much warmer are they?
Speaker 4:Well. Around my hometown we usually get between 25 to 30 degrees. It's not like warm warm in southern Spain, where you get these heat waves that you get also to 40 degrees Celsius. In my hometown it's warm, but nice warm that it doesn't get too oppressive and it usually cools down at night, so that's very refreshing. For me, it's the perfect weather. I really think that northern Spain is a hidden gem that people haven't found out about, and maybe we want to keep it that way.
Speaker 3:So yeah, exactly so. What's the cost of living like there? How much does a cup of coffee cost if that's a standard item that people would have there? Compared to here. What's the cost of gas and things like that? How is it compared to here? What's the cost of gas and things like that? How is it compared to Canada?
Speaker 4:Well, in general in Europe, gas, you have to remember, is much more expensive in all of Europe, much more expensive than in Canada or the States. A little cup of coffee, which is by default espresso, is probably a euro or something like that. It's not expensive. I would say cost of living is not expensive. It's pretty much in sync with what the salaries are. I would say, yeah, it's a very good, nice quality of life, but it's also a very good nice quality of life here in Canada, so no complaints either way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know, I just wondered. So you know, because I'm not sure. I know. Housing out my way and just east of Toronto, where I am in Oshawa, has in the past two decades has jumped unbelievably. It's almost cost ineffective for youth like my sons to try and buy a house here. I don't know whether they're ever going to be able to. I mean, everybody says that when they first buy their first house it's the same thing. But you know, from $175,000 to over a million for the same house in 20 years. That's a big jump in my opinion. And housing the cost of, of, say, housing in in your hometown in that area, if you know that kind of sort of thing.
Speaker 4:It's just that the listeners get interested in hearing some different aspects from around the world and you happen to be from a part that we haven't talked a lot about yeah, no, I mean housing is a big concern, I think, in spain and concern, I think, in Spain, and, as you were saying, the youth being able to buy their first homes. It has been problematic. I would say also in Spain that is not a big tradition of renting. You are kind of expected to buy your house pretty early on. There is I have seen both when I was in the States and here in Canada there is more tradition for people renting for longer periods of time. It has been true in later years in Spain, but it's not traditionally the case. So access to being able to buy your first home in Spain is still. We have a whole ministry dedicated to just housing. So that tells you that it is an issue that somebody has to look after, because you have to make it easier for people to be able to access their homes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Very interesting. Yeah, so, alfredo, you sent me a bunch of information that I found interesting and I read it all, such as the 2024, what is it? The Fundus Annual Report. Yes, yeah, go ahead, Tell us a bit about the report. So there's a bunch of things on there that I want to talk about. It talked about in the mission statement about conservation of fungi and their habitats, increased public awareness and equipping and engaging the community to find out more details about that. How do we have a conservation of the habitats and fungi and things like that?
Speaker 4:yeah.
Speaker 4:So the 2024 fund, this report, and fund this stands for fungal diversity survey, which is a non-profit organization in north america, and this is kind of the latest interaction of something that started about 10 to 12 years ago when professionals of mycology all over North America, but also citizen scientists all over North America and people of mycological clubs got together and said well, we have to really know which mushroom species occur in North America.
Speaker 4:So in the fundus report you can read a lot about the. This is a 2024 report, so the activities for 2024. And I will recommend anybody who's interested in learning what is happening with studies of mushroom diversity in North America go have a look at the report. They really do a great job at summarizing what they're doing and the final objective of the fungal diversity survey is to catalog all mushroom species that occur in North America as part of the process and also as something that will help eventually the project itself to increase awareness of everybody about how little we know about mushrooms in North America and also take that knowledge to be able to develop conservation efforts for the mushrooms. And that relates really to the habitats, because long term, the only real way to deal with these organisms is going to be preserving the habitats where they live be preserving the habit.
Speaker 3:That's where they live? Yeah, because it was. I found it interesting. You know that they want to increase public awareness, which is good, because I have to tell you, I have a business that focuses on Chaga, the inautonomous obliquus, and most people come in and they're completely removed, in Canada at least, from understanding a lot of the benefits for a lot of the fungi and the mushrooms, the fruiting body that are out there, and there's a huge concern, as always. You know I don't want to get involved because I don't want to pick the wrong one. Involved because I don't want to pick the wrong one. So this fundus annual report, it's something that can be found where and what would be the benefits to people who are just starting to learn about various fungi or the fruiting bodies and things along that line.
Speaker 4:Yeah, if you just Google fungal diversity survey or fundus, it will take you to the landing page and there you can not only find the report itself but also background about the project, background about related projects and different efforts that are happening across North America to document fungal diversity. And I would say this is a type of effort that really is very inviting and really welcoming of everybody. It doesn't matter if you're a dedicated, you know, citizen scientist, mycologist that really focuses on mushrooms, or somebody who just casually observes mushrooms from time to time and you just want to learn what they are. So there is a very low kind of entry-level need for previous knowledge about mushrooms. But if you're interested in the in the natural world, in particular mushrooms, this project is great because you can.
Speaker 4:A lot of it happens right in front of the public. Like the observations are posted on iNaturalist, which is a public platform that everybody can use, and I'm sure a lot of the listeners know already about iNaturalist. But all the observations that are kind of input into this documenting project are on iNaturalist and you can see the progress. What happens when you get somebody trying to identify that mushroom? What happens when you get somebody trying to identify that mushroom. What happens when you get back the DNA data that we're generating for this collection? So it's a very alive project and you can see it develop in real time.
Speaker 3:Now, for those that don't know what iNaturalist is, maybe you can just kind of give us a background. Is it a magazine? Is it a website? Is it a report?
Speaker 4:It is a website and it's also an app on your phone, so you can have it on your phone, but usually you can get more capabilities on the website.
Speaker 4:And iNaturalist basically takes the idea of. Nowadays, everybody walks with a device on their pocket that allows you to document the diversity outside, and that is our cell phones that now have cameras and they're connected to the Internet most of the time. So to create an observation on iNaturalist is as simple as getting your phone camera. You can also use a traditional camera if you want, taking a few pictures of whatever you want to document. In the case of mushrooms, you usually need three or four pictures to really document the top of the mushroom, the underside, kind of all the details, and then you take those pictures and you submit them to iNaturalist and that creates a unique observation for that particular collection of mushroom, and that's something that anybody can do. The extra step that really goes into this documenting mushroom diversity in North America projects is that you want to preserve the collection. You want to dry that mushroom and make it an actual scientific collection so research can happen after with that particular observation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've had a number of programs where we talk about identification for mushrooms, for the fruiting bodies, and, as you mentioned, you take a picture of the stem, the top, the underside, to see if it has gills, but also the time of year that the mushroom's growing, the type of forest or growth median. Is it growing on a tree? What type of tree is it growing on the ground?
Speaker 4:in some of those other things that you, is it growing in a cluster and all those sorts of things that to be able to best identify it from at least my limited experience, yeah, all that information is really important for identifying mushrooms, and many of these projects that we will talk about today have little kind of field slips that will have kind of a little checklist with many of the characters that you mentioned, like was this growing on wood? Was it growing on the ground? Was it just one? What species of trees were around? So basic information that, if you record right away when you are observing these things in the field, is going to be really helpful later to help us put all the pieces together about what this mushroom is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the Zepfundis annual report, in the vision statement, talked about fully documentation of the fungal kingdom, which would probably be very, very difficult. I had a professor from the University of Toronto that was talking about various funguses that were growing on dust, for example in households. So it's probably quite in-depth and very large amounts of opportunities for various fungal networks or kingdoms out there that try to find. But the more that we know, the better it is for us in understanding what we're coming from or where we're going to or what the impacts are on us.
Speaker 4:Absolutely One thing that you have to accept very early on when you become a mycologist and this is an endless endeavor it's documenting the fungal kingdom and study of fungi is very kingdom. And study fungi is very, very different from studying animals or plants. It's always far more difficult. You don't have the same access to the whole organism as zoologists or botanists have. If you study animals, even if they're tiny, for the most part you can see the actual organism. You see them moving, you see them going about their lives and you can study them.
Speaker 4:With fungi, you don't see the actual organism for the most part, and only a tiny fraction of fungi actually produce mushrooms, which is just a fruiting structure. So a comparison that I like to make for people when they ask why you know a study of mycology or mushroom diversity is so far behind compared with other things it's like imagine that you have to study all the plants in the world but you never see the plant. You only see the fruits and with that information that the fruit is giving you, you have to figure out everything else. That's what mycologists have had to do for a really long time and luckily now we have DNA techniques that are really helping us understand mushroom diversity and document mushroom diversity.
Speaker 3:Right Now, Alfredo, I always wonder about, for example, business opportunities with the fungal kingdom, and one of the examples that I always thought would be something that would be beneficial is that here in Ontario, where we are, we have these what are called green bins, which is basically food waste that goes into a green bin and then they're collected on a weekly basis from all the households and then they're taken to a site where they're dumped into large mounds actually, and they turn these mounds over. But if there was some sort of growth that could be put into it, it would speed up the breakdown of a lot of that food waste. So if they had a fungi that could be added to those wastes as a potential business opportunity would certainly help municipalities breaking down their waste. And those are just some of the ideas that I wonder about.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. The way fungal activity can be used for practical purposes for humans is, again, it's as endless probably as the diversity itself. And the thing you have to remember about fungi is that they are not plants. They are not doing photosynthesis. They are not just sitting there and getting their food from the sunlight and a little bit of nutrients from the soil. They need something to get their food from.
Speaker 4:A lot of fungi are decomposers. If you give them enough organic matter, they're going to be acting on that organic matter and decomposing it and breaking it down and that's how they get their food and many industrial applications or things that we can think about, how we can use fungi to help us maybe get rid of all the waste that we are generating. These are certainly avenues and research that have received a lot of our attention in recent years. Edible fungi A lot of the edible fungi that we can actually grow in the lab and grow at a scale needed for food production are again decomposers, fungi that are going to be using organic matter to produce their mushrooms. So there is definitely opportunity and there is definitely interesting avenues to explore about how mushrooms get their food and how that is beneficial for us, because we can take advantage of the unique ecologies they have.
Speaker 3:That's for sure. And you know the food waste is just one aspect of municipalities. I mean there's sewage waste as well that, if looked at, there could be. You know, as we develop the fungal kingdom and understanding of it to find ways to deal with sewage that have outhouses, as they say, for their washrooms, that end up having large concentrations of human waste where a fungal component could be added to break it down a lot quicker. And I think that the more that those things are looked at, the better it will be for all of us in making sure that we've got clean environments?
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. The cleaning aspect of fungal agents has been explored for a few decades now. That usually falls under the field of micro-remediation and it's not only for small-scale points of creating waste but large-scale contamination problems that happen. A lot of the mushrooms that actually grow naturally in the forest are bioaccumulators, so naturally they will tend to extract things from the soil and kind of concentrate those in the mushroom. That's one of the problems sometimes with edible mushrooms growing in areas where there is a lot of contamination in the soil, because the mushrooms themselves can accumulate some of the components. But we can actually take advantage of that in some cases and study well, how can we use fungi to clean up areas that have a lot of heavy metals or maybe other type of components in the soil that we want to get rid of? How can we use fungi to help us clean up those areas?
Speaker 3:Well, exactly, there's a lot of what are called brownfield sites, which have basically contamination in the sites that if fungi could be utilized to clean up those to make it. Because I can think of here in Oshawa we've got basically a number of sites in downtown Oshawa that have been sitting idle and my understanding is that there's a lot of contamination in them that if a fungi could have been applied there, the level of contamination would be substantially reduced over the well 20, 30, 40 years that I know that these places have been sitting idle. It gives it certainly a long time to be able to clean up a lot of that, which could be happening to some extent on its own, I believe.
Speaker 4:Yes, that can happen already with organisms that live there already. But really micro-remediation really tries to scale up those natural processes so we can speed them up and we can maybe clean those sites much faster. But a lot of that is happening already just naturally by organisms that are already there and they're doing that by themselves.
Speaker 3:And Alfredo, I know personally. I have a garden at the front of my house. When we bought the house, there were plants in there that had basically consumed a lot of the nutrients in it. So I've been trying to revitalize that garden in different ways, rather than just adding fertilizers and manures and things like that. But I've done things like bringing in sawdust, for example, and in hope that I can reinvigorate the soil to to bring it back to life with uh. Also, to be honest, I'm using rice starch in the area to see if I can to uh reinvigorate the soil. So it's a high concentration where the acidity level and the ability to grow specific plants will change from basically a sandy loam to something that's very beneficial. And I often wonder about opportunities for businesses to get involved with fungal sort of materials or mycelium that could be introduced into areas like that. That can start to assist, and I'm not sure if you've heard of anything along those lines or not.
Speaker 4:There definitely has been research like that and I know for sure from Europe, but also I am starting to see more in North America where a lot of the times people, there are companies that actually sell it's mostly trees but you can sell trees that are already inoculated, like basically seedlings, or young trees that are already inoculated with fungi on the roots. Those fungi are going to be associated, are naturally associated with the roots of the tree and when you get those plants into a certain terrain they already have the advantage that they have fungi already helping them grow, helping them grow faster, but also having that fungal activity on the soil that creates a very dynamic environment. That really is going to be helping kind of speed up a process. That probably would have happened anyway. But if you kind of pre-inoculate and have those plants that you're kind of transferring or putting in a certain place, it's going to certainly help up the health of the plants but also it's going to increase the biological activity in the soil.
Speaker 3:So when you're talking about inoculating trees, are you talking about arbuscular fungal relationships Are?
Speaker 4:you talking about arbuscular fungal relationships, both arbuscular or ectomycorrhizal, which includes the group of fungi that actually produce a lot of edible mushrooms.
Speaker 4:So sometimes the purpose is for ecological, maybe, restoration, when you are reintroducing trees in an area that was damaged for any reason and that would include fungi that may or may not have any interest as edible producing edible mushrooms.
Speaker 4:But sometimes the objective is actually inoculating the tree with fungi that actually produce edible mushrooms, that you can inoculate the trees with fungi that produce porcini mushrooms or that produce certain milk-capped species that are edible, and the final objective is not only to grow the trees and eventually use that as a forest product, but also kind of try to help guarantee that you're also going to have edible mushrooms growing in that area, which is another resource that you can use. So sometimes you're looking at more ecological restoration type of projects. Sometimes you're looking at a production of edible mushrooms with inoculated trees and sometimes you're looking at both, at a production of edible mushrooms with inoculated trees, and sometimes you're looking at both, and again it's looking at how fungi live, how fungi get their food. In this case you're looking at fungi that are associated with the tree in a symbiotic relationship that is beneficial for both, and taking an advantage of that ecology and try to use it for our own advantage.
Speaker 3:Right, I didn't realize that you could inoculate trees with edible mushrooms. Now what type of mushrooms are they Are they consuming? So these are live trees that are growing. It's a symbiotic relationship with the tree that's beneficial to the tree.
Speaker 4:Yes, so most of the trees well, all of the trees, basically that you see around you, if you were able to look at the roots, you will see that the roots of the tree and most vascular plants that are in the trees also are covered with fungi. These are called mycorrhizal fungi Myco for fungus, rhizal for root, so it's an associator between the root and the fungus. So, again, fungi cannot produce their own food like plants. So what they're doing this way is the plant is giving the mushroom, the fungus that is growing on the roots, some of the sugars that the plant is producing by photosynthesis, so the fungus is getting its food In exchange. What this mycorrhizal fungi do on the roots is increase the absorption of water and nutrients from the soil, which is what the plant wants. So it's beneficial for both of them. The mycorrhizal fungi are not causing any harm to the tree. They're actually helping the tree to grow and the tree, in exchange, is giving some of its food to the fungus.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's been a number of quite a bit of research actually on the arbuscular and the other relationships and how the trees communicate to each other through a fungal network as well as not only providing nutrients as well in certain times when some trees have an abundance and other trees do not. And I've seen some of the research out of the University of BC with Susan out there and where it talks about extensively about the research there. It actually seems very interesting. I find it amazing that they communicate through the ground and through these fungal networks.
Speaker 4:Yeah, again, it all comes down to the fact that we don't see the organism. What is happening under the soil is the actual organisms interacting with each other. What we see most of the time when we walk in the forest oh, we see the mushrooms popping up when it's their season. But the actual biology, the actual organism to organism interaction, is happening within the soil. And we I mean in recent times very difficult because even with modern methods, most of the evidence that you get is kind of indirect of what is happening in the soil You're not looking at, you know, an animal eating a leaf or an animal being a predator on another animal. You don't see those interactions with fungi. You have to develop an experimental design that really allows you to peek into what is happening in the soil, how the different individual organisms are actually interacting with each other.
Speaker 3:Now I recall I'm not sure if you're what we call a trekkie here, but star trek, the next generation, where captain picard is basically his mind is captured and he's transported to another world and basically anyways, what's happening is he believes that he's a citizen of this world over extended periods of time in his mind anyways, which is in the real life world very short period time in his mind anyways, which is in the real life world very short period.
Speaker 3:But he goes into the details and starts to do research on the soil in that particular show in that episode and he comes to the conclusion that the world was actually dying because of the nutrients or the microorganisms in the soil were being depleted and killed off in the soil where we're being depleted and killed off.
Speaker 3:And I often wonder about the same sort of thing happening in our world, where UV radiation is coming in quite a bit more and impacting soils and plants and growth and things like that, although nature has its way of correcting itself and helping out. But I certainly see, when I see yards and things like that where we herbicide, pesticide, do everything possible to kill everything there and then fertilize to promote a singular environment or some of the forests that we have and monocultures that it's not beneficial. And I often wonder about the impacts of our world on things like UV radiation or what's happening with the plastics and the soil contamination. And it's the same sort of thing from that Star Trek, the Next Generation TNG, where Picard sees his world dying off, and it gives me a bit of concern about how things are impacted, whether we're spraying our lawns for killing off certain things that are actually very beneficial to the soil and everything else.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. What happens in the soil is the basis for everything else, and it's something that we understand less than what is happening on the surface, but it's probably very important. So if we do anything to the environment, whether it is just our own lawn or on a larger scale, you know, the is bacteria. There is also other microorganisms that play a role in soil ecology. If we alter what is actually happening in the soil, that is going to have consequences, maybe long term and for sure on the surface. And the soil supports not only our forest ecosystems but it also supports our crops and the way we grow food. So understanding again understanding the biological processes that happen in the soil, it is really important, not only because we want the knowledge as humans, but it has very direct consequences to what we grow for food, how we use our natural resources. So understanding that is very important. And the world of fungal ecology. I'm not a fungal ecologist, I study biodiversity, but I find it endlessly fascinating.
Speaker 3:I would agree with you completely and I think the more research that takes place, the more applications will become evident out there whether that's a medical application, which are more and more research is taking place.
Speaker 3:I think we had Dr Thorne from Western who had been dealing with lion's mane mushrooms from Western who had been dealing with lion's mane mushrooms. Lion's mane, the research that I have in a number of papers I've read talks about reconstituting neural pathways in the brain and spinal column, but Dr Thorne's research indicated that it was in the mycelium where the highest concentrations, as opposed to the fruiting body, of beneficial aspects are. So the more research we do, the more medical applications potentially are there, and a lot of the things being utilized from lion's mane is simply dementia, alzheimer's, parkinson's and breakthroughs in those areas I can see coming through. And I have to tell you, fredo, that I've met a number of doctors. My own doctor is from Sri Lanka, very, very little understanding of mushrooms at all, but I met a Romanian doctor who works in the same clinic and she trained in Romania and has extensive mushroom knowledge. So it's quite diverse the amount of information that's there.
Speaker 4:But I think that the medical applications are going to continue on, so that we're going to benefit a lot more from a lot of these things Absolutely, and I think a lot of the pharmaceutical compounds that we use in medicine and many of them have been used in traditional medicine for a long time and eventually they were researched for more kind of industrial Western medicine applications we have done that mostly with plants, so fungi are still a very in-depth resource in terms of, well, what substances are these organisms producing? How can we use them, how can we grow them, how can we gather whatever particular chemical they're producing? How is that chemical compound can be beneficial for humans? That is again a field of research that has been expanding in recent times and I think it's going to be very important moving forward.
Speaker 3:Oh, I think I would agree completely that a lot of industry or business sectors out there will be looking at the fungal networks and the potentials out there. I mean, I'm not sure if you've heard of Metamucil, for example, where the Metamucil powder, one of the key components in that is the weed we call it a weed plantain where they're using parts of that plantain to provide regularity for a lot of individuals. And in the more research I looked into the Metamucil, they have those gummies where they use actually it's a roast chicory root is what they're using in the gummines to keep people regular, shall we say. And I find that industry as a whole is doing more and more research. So the point bringing this out is those parents and students listening. These are some of the areas that are quickly being jumped on by business and there's a lot of potential opportunities out there that people can look into.
Speaker 5:Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's favorite fishing show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right. Every Thursday, angelo and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Hmm, now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing. I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch. Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go fishing To scientists. Now that we're reforesting and letting things breathe.
Speaker 1:It's the perfect transmission environment for life to be.
Speaker 2:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 5:And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you are. Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, we've got Rob from Hamilton here, who's had some success with the Chaga cream. Rob, can you tell us about it?
Speaker 6:Yeah, I've used it on blemishes, cuts, just basically all around healing Anything kind of blemish. It speeds it up really quick. Great, it speeds the speeds it up really quick. Great, it speeds the healing process up really well. It leaves no marks and doesn't stain. It smells okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, thanks, rob, appreciate that. You're welcome. We interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY C-A-N-O-P-Y. The code CANOPY C-A-N-O-P-Y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening Back to the episode Now, alfredo.
Speaker 3:One of the things that I noticed that you know you talked about in that Fundus annual report was about engaging partners and getting more information out there, and I think there's a premise I used to say all the time was that if you teach a student, you teach a singular. If you teach a teacher, you teach the many, so the more teachers that can be informed about these fungal kingdoms and the opportunities out there, the more that it's going to expand and positions like yours will increase in demand in many different ways. So, alfredo, you sent me some other information. What is it? The Mycota, did I say?
Speaker 5:that correctly. Yeah, mycota.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it talks about DNA sequencing. First of all, tell us, just so our listeners know, what is DNA sequencing in the first place.
Speaker 4:Well, it depends on the context, about what we talk about. Dna sequencing these days can mean just sequencing a little portion of DNA for barcoding living organisms, sequencing your whole genome. Some of us, or some people out there, have used, you know, have sequenced their own DNA to look at their ancestry. So it can mean different things. In the modern context, in the context of fungal diversity, it mostly means barcoding. So you want to sequence a small portion, a very tiny portion, of the whole DNA of the mushroom that you're looking at and with that tiny portion of DNA you're going to compare it, all the collections that you have sequenced, to each other. So you want to sequence something that is similar enough within the same species but at the same time different between species. So it allows you, once you have that little barcode think of the barcodes of any product that you see in the supermarket. When that barcode is scanned in the cashier, it tells you exactly what the product is because it's a unique barcode for that product.
Speaker 4:Sequencing DNA for mushroom collections tries to do the same thing. Once you have that barcode, once you have those 600, 700 letters of DNA, it should tell you what species do you have letters of DNA. It should tell you what species do you have. That's the principle, but as we have seen, as we have worked on this research for quite a long time now, it's actually more complicated. Having the data is fantastic, but it's one piece of the puzzle. It takes a lot of additional research to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, to actually get the full picture about mushroom diversity and what species do you have.
Speaker 3:So with DNA sequencing being consistent through the entire plant, whether it's the fruiting body or the mycelium.
Speaker 4:Yes, it doesn't matter if you were sequenced that particular. Yeah, you will be, it will. You will get the same result whether you're sequencing a mushroom or sequencing mycelium of the same species. That will be consistent. And and again, these type of projects like the FANDIS, the Fungal Diversity Survey that we talk about most of, the projects like the Atlantic Canada micro map that we're doing right now. It tries to sequence as many collections as possible of mushrooms, get as many of those barcodes of DNA for as many collections as possible and then put all that data together and eventually figure out. The final answer that we're trying to answer here is like how many species of mushrooms that we have in Canada, in the States, in Mexico, in North America in general for this project.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I recall when I was Minister of Natural Resources here in Ontario there was a company from Texas that wanted to buy all the rights to DNA from the province of Ontario for all environments and I refused to pass that on and I imagine that from the company's perspective they're trying to control a lot of materials that could have beneficial aspects for society as a whole.
Speaker 4:Absolutely for society as a whole.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, there is probably that type of research would probably look more into sequencing the full genome of the organism and looking at particular, maybe genes, particular portions of that genome that do specific things that may have applications For the fungal diversity aspect of it.
Speaker 4:All of the data is actually public as soon as the data, as those sequences, are generated. And I should mention all of these efforts are mostly run by non-profit organizations, by voluntary people who dedicate their time, their effort and sometimes their own money into creating this breadth of knowledge, particularly Steve Russell, who works at my Cora Labs, who is one of the main labs who does the actual DNA sequencing. In just a few years, if you go actually to iNaturalist and look for well how many mushroom collections have DNA data, it's over 70,000 collections of mushrooms with DNA barcodes in North America right now and most of that effort comes again from community science efforts and I mean I work at an institution that has a research component, the New Brunswick Museum, and there are other people working at universities and this can be integrated into their research programs and this collaboration is great. But a lot of the effort is really from just naturalists, people who have a particular interest in mushrooms and who are willing to dedicate time and effort into generating that data.
Speaker 3:Interesting. So and the big advantage to basically keeping all these DNA, because is there mutations in a lot of the fungal networks that are out there that you know 50 years from now they may change, and does the DNA change when there's changes in those networks?
Speaker 4:Probably this type of research won't detect those changes. Like evolutionary changes, like even mutations, happen over evolutionary time. They're really, really slow. What this project does allow us to do in terms of long-term research is we can look at if we sequence all the mushrooms that, let's say, occur right outside St John, new Brunswick right now, and I do that for the next five years, somebody 20, 30, 50 years from now can do the same thing and they will have my data, they will have my DNA sequences, they will have the collections at the New Brunswick Museum deposited there to compare and they can do that again and say, well, has the community of fungi has changed in 20 years, in 30 years?
Speaker 4:That's something that has been done quite a lot for, again for plants and animals, because we have the baseline data to compare it to. For fungi, we are generating now that baseline data of what fungal species do we have in North America. Once we have that kind of base picture of what we have, we can come back regularly and see, well, what has changed. And again, this is we're having these DNA sequences open to the public. Anybody can go into the individual iNaturalist observations and look at those sequences. But also having the collections, the actual collections, like the collections for New Brunswick, are going to stay at the New Brunswick Museum as part of the herbarium. Then having those collections and those data is going to allow us in the future to go back and do those long-term comparisons.
Speaker 3:So the public at large, Alfredo, can they contribute and if so, how can they add to these DNA?
Speaker 4:databanks. Yes, absolutely Anybody can contribute to these projects, wherever you are. If you are located in Atlantic Canada. We have kind of an umbrella project that brings together New Brunswick, pei, nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, so mushrooms from all of the Atlantic Canada provinces are going to be kind of studied together, which makes sense. We're going to share a lot of species and we're going to see especially for rare species. We're going to have the chance to study them across a larger region.
Speaker 4:And if you want to participate, you can go to mycotacom and you can search for the micro or if you just Google micro map Atlantic Canada, it will take you to the landing page of the project and it will give you some details about how to keep your collections, how to document them, where to send them for DNA sequencing and another again another important part this is at no cost to the end users, which is the end users, which are the general public. They have to pay no money to sequence their mushroom collections. And basically, if you go to the Micromap Atlantic Canada network, it will give you the very specific details. It's not a complicated process. Basically, you're going to take pictures in the field of the mushrooms you want to study. You're going to try those mushrooms collections, you're going to create iNaturalist observations for each find and then you're going to mail your collections to me or to some of the other partners in Atlantic Canada and we will eventually send them for DNA sequencing at my Coral Lab, for DNA sequencing at my Coralab.
Speaker 3:Now. So what areas? So somebody from Ontario or Quebec would they be able to send in, or how far east?
Speaker 4:and west do we go? It expands. I mean there are also these events called continental microblitzes, which are usually two weeks in the summer, about two weeks in the fall, where everybody can send up to 10 collections. Quebec has a few sequencing projects, coordinated through Myco-Québec, which is kind of the group that reunites all mycologists in Quebec and other parts of Canada. They have mycological associations where they're doing their own sequencing project.
Speaker 4:The reason why Atlantic Canada is falling right now under the umbrella of MycoMap is when I started sending New Brunswick samples to Steve Russell at Mycota Labs for sequencing, he was finding that some of the things that he was sequencing they had no matches at all in the dna databases. There were things that were sequenced for the first time here in atlantic canada. So he decided well, we're gonna open up the project so everybody can document mushrooms in this region and there are a few regions now that are open for this kind of unlimited sequencing. But if you just contact my Cota Labs and you have a particular project, I'm sure they can figure out how to kind of bring you into the umbrella of the project. But there are different ways. I would say if you're interested in general in fungal diversity, look around your area. See what mycological groups, mycological societies or even general naturalist societies or nature clubs are around your area. They will probably can help you getting in touch with people who are more invested into the sequencing aspect.
Speaker 3:So this would be something potentially I know because I did some lectures, for example at schools. Say oh, the one I did in Millbrook where the students could potentially go out and collect a number of samples and then do this process and submit them.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, and this is a type of project that lends very well, with some coordination, to projects that can be done with students. I've done similar projects, not for mushrooms specifically, but when I was teaching back in Massachusetts at Worcester State University, we did use iNaturalist in some of our ecology labs to basically how can we use this to document diversity just in your local park, in your local nature protected area that you may have near you? And really all the components are there, the resources are there. The resources are there. It's just try to coordinate, come up with a plan so you can definitely use this type of project in a school setting for sure.
Speaker 3:So, and the specific steps necessary to do submissions are all there and it tells people because you mentioned you need to dry them, how to dry them to a standard. So that's so.
Speaker 4:There's not problems when they're being shipped yeah, basically you have to make sure they're very crisp. They're, you know, kind of cracker crisp. They're completely, have lost their their moisture so they don't and they tend to rehydrate. But if they're completely dry then they be fine. We can take it from there when you send us the collections. And the best way to do it, if you're really going to be invested in this type of project, is to get just a food dehydrator. They're not expensive, but think of it as one more investment for your naturalist activities. But definitely if you're going to be studying mushroom with certain regularity, I would say get a food dehydrator. That is going to be the faster way. Basically, mushrooms have to be dry, with kind of hot air, but not extremely hot air flowing over them, so that's the best way to dry them quickly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I see different articles. One was out of what was it? Vitality Magazine and talks about extracting the benefits from Chega but not to take it over 140 degrees Fahrenheit when doing an extraction with a warm water extraction but it goes into sake because it could potentially kill off any of the benefits. But there's no research to verify or deny it, because I see a lot of articles that do extraction of components, particularly in South Korea and the same ones where they actually do extractions at a boiling point. So that's quite a bit hotter, but is it the same thing here that not too hot because it may kill off some of the benefits or some of the DNA information that's being looked for?
Speaker 4:That's something that has been discussed by the mycological community for a long time. I think we have come to decide that what is most important is to dry the mushrooms quickly. The temperature is less important. I usually when I bring the mushrooms back to the museum from the field and put them in the dryers, that dryer is usually about 40 degrees Celsius and usually that dries between 24, 48 hours depending on the size of the mushroom. If you have really big mushrooms it's better to cut them in half so they dry quicker. They're very fleshy mushrooms but I would say 40 degrees Celsius for 24, 48 hours. But I think we already have seen that if you dry them Basically, the key point is to dry them quickly, as quickly as possible. That is what. If you don't dry them right away, that's where you might see some degradation of the DNA that later may not allow you to sequence the mushroom properly. So dry them quickly. Get a food dehydrator if you can. Those are the best tips for drying the mushrooms.
Speaker 3:Now is there a problem with when you put them in the dehydrator? Because I know I had one friend who was supplying a researcher with dehydrated mushrooms that he was finding in the wild, but his dehydrator filled up with spores, according to him as a result of dehydrating the mushroom, and does that complicate problems for anything else?
Speaker 4:Not really. The dehydrator is going to be fine. What I would say? If you try to keep things tidy and neat, remember a dehydrator is basically blowing hot air into the mushrooms. So maybe put the mushrooms inside a paper bag so they don't blow all over the place. You want to keep each collection separate from each other, so if you just put them in a dehydrator they're just going to blow all over the place. I have little boxes cardboard boxes that I use to separate my samples from each other, but you can put paper bags. The mushrooms can be inside paper bags with maybe the iNaturalist number written on the outside or something that identifies the mushroom. You will probably have labels already printed at this point, but little paperbacks can be used to kind of separate the samples and keep everything inside the dehydrator tidy.
Speaker 3:Very interesting. So, Alfredo, are you familiar with chaga?
Speaker 4:I'm familiar with chaga. I know a lot of people through the Mycological Society here in New Brunswick, MycoMV, that do look for chaga.
Speaker 3:So I have a question then for you Is the chaga found on yellow birch the same as found on ironwood, the same that's found on white birch, the same that's found on different poplar strains as well?
Speaker 4:As far as I know right now, yes. When we have a sequence, 200 or 300 samples of chaga across North America, maybe I will have a different answer, but we don't have them yet, as far as I know. Yes, it's the same species. As far as we can tell right now, yes, but again, that's exactly the type of question that we're trying to answer Like is this mushroom that I see all over the place, the same species everywhere? Right? That's exactly what we're trying to do For chaga as of right now? Yes, but ask me again in five years.
Speaker 3:All right, I'll tell you what I'll commit to, because we do a lot of harvesting, I will commit to send in different samples, and is there a specific moisture content that you need to get it down to? Because that's how I check the chagas, by checking the moisture content.
Speaker 4:Basically with any mushrooms. What you're looking for is something that will not grow mold because it's too wet or, in the case of fleshy mushrooms, that it will not rehydrate by itself really quickly. So again, drying anything for 24, 48 hours at 40 degrees Celsius should be fine for most things at 40 degrees Celsius should be fine for most things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll send in a different from white birch, yellow birch, hop horn bean, ironwood and some other strains that we find as well, and then the expertise can better decide what may be beneficial there or not.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely Just knowing what it is Like in biology, maybe I think it's. The first question is what organism are you dealing with? And for mushrooms, that is still a question that has no answer for many of them, right? Because we still have to figure out exactly how many species do we have, how do we tell them apart? And that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 3:So in some of the research are you finding that the different growth medians that mushrooms are found in may have different benefits or components, or DNA sequencing?
Speaker 4:Like I don't particularly do like grow things myself in the lab but, like most of the time I just work with the mushrooms, so I don't look necessarily anything beyond what the mushroom is and what the DNA sequence for that particular collection is. A lot of the people who do grow mushrooms in a lab setting, definitely they do try to grow them, especially if they're looking at an expression of how much of this particular compound the mushroom is producing. Definitely, trying different growth mediums is gonna, is gonna be part of the experiment, because you, a certain organism, may produce a certain substance, but only under certain conditions, so that definitely if you're looking at expression of chemical compounds, you're going to be trying to grow them in different ways and see how it changes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because, uh, as I've mentioned a couple times about dr thorn and lion's mane and and his research, telling me that in the mycelium had the highest medicinal applications. But I asked him about the fruiting body and he said they hadn't done any research on that, but also the growth medians. Is there different levels of medicinal applications found in different growth medians? And, as you just said, they try to find specific components to be able to produce certain aspects within their own fungal kingdom, to produce certain things.
Speaker 4:So there's a lot more research needs to be done. I think, yeah, no, absolutely, we have to look, you have to be when it comes to expression of, you know, certain properties you definitely want to have as a wider range of experimental settings as possible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's so many different things. Now, alfredo, tell us about now. I've got a business of dyslexia, so it's the nova uh celestorotium.
Speaker 4:Oh, that's the nova sclerotium. Yes, that's the newsletter for the nova scotia mycological society. Okay, yeah, and I I did a kind of a small article I think it was 2019, which actually talks about most of the things that we talk about today here, about how much effort we still have to put into documenting fungal diversity. And, yeah, newsletters for mycological societies and Nature Club are treasure troves of information. If you're interested, we also have one for the new brunswick mycological society. Myco mb is called fungus crypta and it's also available to the to the public. You just go to myco mborg that's our mycological association in new brunswick website and you can read and it's really a great place for people who are part of the society to really share what they're finding, and it can be a recipe of the mushrooms they're cooking. It can be some research that I'm doing at the museum, it can be anything. So, yeah, the Nova Sclerotium newsletter for Nova Scotia also publishes small articles from their members.
Speaker 3:Oh, very good. Well, alfredo, I very much appreciate all the information. I found it very interesting and enlightening in a lot of ways and, from what I'm hearing, there's a lot of opportunities for listeners, whether it's through their school, or to get involved in participating in developing the DNA sequencing or the database out there. By participating, which is always great for our listeners, and you mentioned a number of different areas that people can get more research, whether it's the iNaturalist or some of the other areas, which was the first thing that we talked about was the Fundus report, as well as some of the other things. So, alfredo, how do people get in touch with you or where can they find out more information regarding all the great things that we've been talking about?
Speaker 4:Well, you can find me. I have my own webpage, alfredohustowebleycom, but if you just Google Alfredo Justo Mycology, it's going to be me. There are not that many, so Alfredo Justo Mycology will take you to my research page. You can find me through the New Brunswick Museum website and you can contact me through the New Brunswick Museum. No problem at all. I also do a lot of activities with the MycoMB Society, the New Brunswick Mycological Society, especially during mushroom season. I try to do a nature walk with them once a month during mushroom season. So yeah, I'm very findable on the internet. You just search for Alfredo Justo Mycology and also check out other websites. If you're interested in any of these projects that we talk about today, Just go to Fungal Diversity Survey or go to the North American Mycological Society and they will have links and how to contact people, how to get more in touch with many of the fungal diversity projects that are happening across North America asking me to take them on nature walks.
Speaker 3:Now, I've done a couple with schools and I talk about various things whether it's a red clover or maple syrup or how apple trees pollinate and all those different things but nature walks fungal nature walks are something that a lot of people really want to find out about. So you mentioned about a nature walk, and this is the first I'm hearing about it. Tell us about yours, do you?
Speaker 4:know when they are and is there a cost involved and where are they located? Okay, so for the ones that I do in New Brunswick with my CoMB, they're free for the members of the society. So you just have to become a member and then you have access to all the walks. So I'm located mostly in saint john, so I do in the saint john region, but we have other people in new brunswick doing walks around fredericton, around moncton, and we're trying to expand a little bit to the northern part of the province. So the best way to know when these are happening, the society has a Facebook page and we make public the dates of these walks.
Speaker 4:Again, for myself, I usually try to do one in July, august, september, october. So at least four walks every season, every season. Then we also have an annual foray for the society. That again gets advertised through the Facebook page and through the page of the society itself. So, just yeah, just go to microNBorg or find the Mycological Society of New Brunswick through Facebook and you will see of these activities popping up, starting June, july and running through the mycological season, and every walk is just about a one to two hour walk in some interesting natural area of New Brunswick and we basically talk about the mushrooms. We find that day and some people come with an interest, just basically edible versus toxic, and we tell them about that.
Speaker 3:Give us, can you, alfredo, can you just spell out that Facebook page? It's. What is it? Mycomborg? It's.
Speaker 4:M-Y-C-O-N-B, as in New Brunswick dot org. Okay, yeah, mycomborg. Okay, very good.
Speaker 3:WelloinBeeorg. Okay, Very good. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate that. I think that people will find it very interesting, because I know that there's a significant number of listeners who are constantly looking for fungal walks to be able to get out and find a mushroom and some experience and to gain more knowledge. You know, for those in the East Coast certainly, but the more connections that people have for things in the Toronto or the Southern Ontario would be beneficial as well. But I'm sure that those can kind of open up.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, and there is a Toronto Mycological Society and I'm sure they also have their own activities. And in Quebec there is a lot of mycological groups, and if you are located elsewhere, look for your closest mycological society. I'm sure there is one near you.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you very much, Dr Alfredo Justo, for taking the time to be on our podcast. We very much appreciate it, and it's just some more interesting things that we're learning out there under the canopy. Thanks again, thank you for having me.
Speaker 5:How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, learn and have plenty of laughs along the way. Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass, and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show. My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that's might be for more fishing than it was. Punching you so confidently, you said hey, pat, have you ever eaten a drum? Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.