ABSTRACT
Since ancient times, mushrooms have played an important role in the lives of people who collected them in the environment. Noticing the way they grow in nature, some human communities have themselves started growing mushrooms in forests in completely natural conditions. Over time, outdoor cultivation could no longer meet the growing needs of people, which inevitably led to the development of a new growing technique, i.e. indoor cultivation. This has brought many benefits – maintaining controlled conditions for mushroom growth and thus a significant increase in fruiting bodies production, which also contributes to the conversion of huge amounts of the lignocellulosic waste left over from agricultural and forestry production into protein-rich foods. The development of science and technology in recent decades has opened another important direction – the submerged liquid fermentation. This unique technology enables the controlled production of large amounts of mycelium as a source of highly valuable proteins, as well as the production of secondary metabolites such as polysaccharides that can be isolated from the mycelium or the fermentation broth. With all these cultivation strategies, fruiting bodies, mycelium, and secondary metabolites obtained from edible and medicinal mushrooms have become more accessible to a much larger number of people.
