5. Cultivation
The natural fruiting bodies of Cordyceps are very
rare and costly to collect. Fruiting body
production in vitro is not repeatable and
cordycepin content of natural Cordyceps is much
lower than that of cultured mycelia[20].
Cultivation of C. militaris mycelium using
artificial media has recently been developed in
which several methods have been reported for
cordycepin production such as surface culture [21]
and submerged cultur[22] . The first method[21]
gave higher cordycepin yields. However, only a
single C. militaris strain was employed and
cordycepin production may vary with different
strains.