Mushroom Odors
Jim Cornish
Virginia Till in the mountains around Telluride. Photo courtesy J. Hammond.
O
dors, and olfactors to detect them, have probably been around since life first appeared
on our planet. After billions of years of evolution, species across all kingdoms are now fine-tuned to recognize and react to the various odors in their environments. We have known for decades that plants, animals, and insects use odors to defend themselves, to forage for food and to find mates, but we are just beginning to learn that odors benefit fungi in similar ways.1,2
Tis
article brings together some of what has been published about mushroom odors and their use in the identification and in the ecology of some common mushrooms. Unfortunately, we cannot include “scratch and sniff” stickers to complement your reading experience. So instead, the next time you find a mushroom, take a whiff. You might be surprised by how familiar it smells!
What are odors? Odors are volatile organic chemicals
that evaporate easily at normal air temperatures and atmospheric pressures. Characteristically complex, odors are usually mixtures of dozens of different chemicals varying in proportions and concentrations, hence their variety in scent and potency.3
Odors are
ubiquitous in nature, usually resulting from metabolic activity and existing as secondary metabolites in plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi. Teir potencies often depend on their functions, either as signals, cues, or weapons.1 In sufficient quantities, odors can be
detected by olfactors such as vertebrate noses, invertebrate antennae, and plant and fungal receptor cells. Not all olfactors perceive odors equally. Animal noses and antennae can sense traces of volatiles undetectable by other creatures,
including us humans. While our noses have some 400 scent receptors and can detect over a trillion odors, how we interpret scent and odor potency often depends on our age, gender, physiology, and individual sensitivities.4
and fungal cells sense odors has not yet been fully explained.
Mushroom odors To date, only some 300 distinct
mushroom odors have been analyzed and their constituent chemicals profiled.5
Tese profiles show that
mushroom odors are typically mixtures of compounds from a variety of chemical classes such as esters, acids, aldehydes, amines, terpenes, sulfides and nitrogenic compounds and their derivatives.1,6 Most fungal odors are biosynthesized as secondary metabolites; others arise from amino acids and the oxidation and cleavage of unsaturated fatty acids.7
Fall 2021 FUNGI Volume 14:4 45
How plants
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