P
eople have harvested mushrooms from the
wild for thousands of years for food and
medicines. Of the estimated 1.5 million
species of fungi, about 10,000 produce the fruiting
bodies we call mushrooms. While commercial
harvesting of wild mushrooms continues today,
most of the world’s supply comes from commercial
mushroom growers. The Chinese first cultivated
shiitake (Lentinula edodes) mushrooms
around 1100 AD, with domestication efforts
beginning centuries earlier. White button mushrooms
(Agaricus spp.), most familiar to Americans
and Europeans, were first domesticated in
France in 1650. Commercial production began in
the United States in the 1880s. Agaricus is the
leading mushroom crop worldwide and accounted
for 99 percent of the 1997 United States’ mushroom
production. Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus
spp.) were more recently domesticated, and now
rank second in world production. Shiitake mushrooms,
which are very popular in Asian cultures,
rank third. Many other edible mushrooms, such as
straw and wood ear mushrooms, are gaining