with 30 ml of appropriate medium for culturing each
strain. After becoming solid, the medium was cut into halves, one of which was replaced by
CAS-blue agar (15 ml). The halves containing culture medium were inoculated with strains taken from
stock cul- tures. The inoculum was placed as far as possible from the borderline between the two
media. The plates were incubated at growth temperature of each strain for three weeks in the dark.
Strain growth rates were daily monitored and expressed as the number of days required by the
microorganism mycelia to cover the halves of Petri plates containing the culture medium. The CAS
reaction rate was determined by