Growing mushrooms from home is a great hobby for both food, fun and profit. You will need some special equipment for following the Agar procedures. Mushroom cultivation can be done without this step but it is great for the enthusiast who wants to clone mushrooms and isolate sub-strains from fruiting mushrooms to store in their personal culture libraries.

Agar Culture:
Agar is a polysaccharide derived from marine red algae. Agar is unique because it has the ability to remain liquid until cooling below 36 degrees C. The advantage here is that nutrients and other growth media can be mixed together before the Agar solidifies. The agar will remain solid at room temperature. Once the solution is mixed together it can be poured into individual Petri dishes for use in inoculating with one of the following: mushroom spores, a liquid culture, an agar wedge from a colonized Petri dish or live tissue from the mushroom itself. Using live tissue is a method for cloning a desired species and capturing its unique characteristics.
There are 5 different types of media and their name refers to their functionality.

•??General Purpose Medium: This is designed to grow a broad spectrum of microorganisms. Nutrient Agar is a general purpose media.
•??Enriched Medium: This media is enriched with some kind of special growth factor such as blood, serum, hemoglobin etc.
•??Selective Medium: This contains a chemical that inhibits the growth of certain organisms while promoting the growth of others.
•??Differential Medium: This can grow several types of microorganisms, but can distinguish among them due to different appearances on the medium; color of the colonies or color of the medium where the organisms are growing.
•??Fermentation Medium: This determines whether a microorganism can ferment a particular carbohydrate. Fermentation is an anaerobic process that often generates acids. If the carbohydrate is fermented, acid is produced, and this can be detected by a PH indicator dye.

For our purposes in growing mushrooms we will be using a Selective Medium. We will be adding various nutrients, minerals, etc. to promote the growth of our mycelium. We can even add antibiotics to hinder the growth of some bacteria.
There are many Agar recipes that can be used but two of the most common are Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) and Malt Extract Agar (MEA).

Malt Extract Agar (MEA)
10 grams light malt extract
9 grams agar agar
500 ml potable or distilled water

Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA)
Broth from boiling 150 grams sliced potatoes
in 500ml water for 30 minutes (add water to 500ml)
9 g agar agar
7 grams dextrose
1 gram brewers yeast or yeast-extract (optional)

Amaranth Soy Agar
20 grams amaranth flour
20 grams soy flour
9 grams agar agar
500 ml potable or distilled water

Cornmeal Dextrose Agar
25 grams yellow cornmeal
3 grams dextrose
9 grams agar agar
500 ml potable or distilled water

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