Some say inoculating BRF jars with a living culture (LC or agar slurry) shortens the colonization time. This seems almost too good to be true so I have put the three methods in test (spore syringe vs LC vs agar)

I have prepared the incoulants from a single spore print and then inoculated three pairs of jars and here are the results (top = front, bottom = back):



"GT" label means "Golden Teacher" and "S = spores", "LC = liquid culture", "A = agar".

The growth boundary has been made after a week since inoculation (the amount of colonization was same for all jars) and the actual state is after next five days.

As you can see, both living cultures grow much faster and show more rhizomorphic mycelium.

Unfortunately, BOTH jars made with a spore syringe got contaminated by a green mold and this may caused its dimished growth, effectively spoiling the experiment. I will left the four remaining jars to fully colonize and fruit.

Anyway, I learned that sterile LC and agar can be prepared without a pressure cooker by tyndallization (fractional sterilization) and that liquid culture need not to grow too big to be usable for inoculation (a 1 cc cloud of mycelium floating in 100 cc of solution was enough).

I will stick with agar from now on as the extra time for preparing a living culture definitely worths the solid results and better control.