This invention relates to a new and distinct variety of mushroom plant of Bunashimeji mushroom, Hypsizigus marmoreus. This new variety named ‘Hokuto-18’ cultivated by repeated breeding of Bunashimeji mushrooms having dominant traits, which is tasty and less bitter to the taste, has excellent quality, pleasing appearance, good keeping quality and storage life and ensure stability, reproducibility and uniformity.
Whereas the Bunashimeji mushroom has been so far cultivated artificially and widely eaten, the Bunashimeji mushroom produced by gathering and artificially cultivating wild mushrooms tastes unpleasantly bitter.
The Bunashimeji mushroom has a cap (pileus) with mottles. The mottles of the artificially cultivated Bunashimeji mushroom take various forms such as clear mottles, minute mottles or dilute mottles. The fine mottles, which are characteristic of the Bunashimeji mushroom, improve the appearance of the mushroom and prove to be good in quality. The thicknesses of the stem and cap of the mushroom affect eating quality. It is of course that the mushroom having good eating quality is superior in quality of goods. It is therefore significant to find suitable varieties of mushroom out of wild Bunashimeji mushrooms in order to improve the varieties as much as possible.
Furthermore, the perishable mushroom gradually deteriorates in flavor and quality when being preserved for a while after harvesting. Thus, there has been a need for mushrooms having good keeping quality and storage life so as not to degrade their quality during the course of distribution. However, it is disadvantageously difficult to find suitable fungal strains having good qualitative character and high quality from a huge variety of wild mushrooms gathered and screened carefully.