There are certain species of mushrooms that can't be cultivated artificially and only found naturally in the wild, are there also any plants that are unable to be grown artificially?

Submitted by PianoTrumpetMax t3_11phmqk in askscience

I was watching a Youtube video and they mention that Amanita muscaria has not been grown artificially by humans. Something about the fact that it requires mature trees to grow I believe. Is this true for anything in the plantae kingdom?

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KahlessAndMolor t1_jbyweza wrote

Not an exact analog, but "real" wasabi is exceptionally difficult to grow because it needs a stream with moving water, and a specific set of nutrients in the soil near the stream, and it is tough to fertilize them because the water needs to be moving. And if you don't get the nutrients right, the roots are too small/craggy to use, because you have to cut off so much of the skin of the root, so it needs to be fat to use. So most wasabi paste you buy in the store is regular horseradish with some added color and flavor.

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Also, in the animal kingdom, it is considered generally impossible to milk a pig, even though they do produce a significant amount of milk. You can buy cow milk, goat milk, even llama milk, but not pig milk. The basic reason is that mama pigs are very aggressive and large animals and nobody has been able to develop a process to consistently get them to cooperate enough.

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Darryl_Lict t1_jbz3nva wrote

Replying to KahlessAndMolor (#2,216,042)

I assumed that wasabi would get a mention. I think I've had real wasabi at a fancy schmancy sushi restaurant, but I'm perfectly OK with green dyed horseradish because that's what I was weaned on. In the past few years, farmers have developed agricultural practices to successfully grow wasabi. The one I remember specifically was using greenhouses and water sprayers and not growing in an environment specifically mimicking the free flowing fresh water streams where wasabi grows in the wild.

https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/2709/2021/06/PNW605.pdf

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nuclear_splines t1_jbz9vkm wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#2,216,590)

I don’t think that’s what they’re saying at all; it’s not that it hasn’t been done, it’s that no one’s found a practical way to do it at scale and make pig milk (pilk?) a viable product

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No_Dig3340 t1_jbzisxw wrote

Yes, many plants are difficult to cultivate outside of the wild. Probably too many to name. But for exactly the same reason, the have relationships with mycelium and other soil organisms that cannot be recreated in captivity.

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atomfullerene t1_jbzxfj6 wrote

I can't specifically answer, but I can give some extra information

Most plants are autotrophs, which means they can synthesize their own material from a set of basic elements and sunlight. This makes them a bit easier to grow in general.

Many fungi (and a few plants) are parasitic/symbiotic on the roots of other plants. Becuase of this, they are harder to culture. You can't just grow them in isolation, you need the organisms they depend on as well....or at minimum you need a replacement.

But with mushrooms it's even harder, because the mushroom is essentially the fruit of the fungus. And the fungus won't send up mushrooms unless environmental conditions are right. So not only do you have to grow the fungus, you also have to figure out how to get it to fruit.

And finally there's a question of demand. There has been progress made in culturing truffles, because truffles are super valuable. But most mushrooms don't have millions of dollars poured in to figuring out how to grow them, so nobody's figured it out yet.

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HeraldOfNyarlathotep t1_jc0chw3 wrote

Replying to sfchimera (#2,218,150)

It's moreso envisioning how mass production would be applied to it, than anything.

And that's certainly not true. Zombies in media are generally ridiculous in many ways even if you handwave the actual function of a zombie virus. For the same reasons an AI uprising is simply not remotely scary compared to media portrayals of the idea; we've yet to find or make something similar. A little like saying we're experimenting with planet-glassing lasers because we're experimenting with powerful lasers.

Research is being done on all sorts of much more immediately dangerous stuff, and generally with very good reason.

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Idyotec t1_jc14qyi wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#2,216,237)

Cordyceps Militaris can be grown in labs. It parasitizes ants. You can make an ant powder based substrate. Cordyceps Sinensis is harder due to the silkworms and altitude it's used to iirc. There are a bunch of Cordyceps for all kinds of insects, grasshoppers and crickets would probably be easy too but I don't know the strain name for those.

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Allfunandgaymes t1_jc1yxn5 wrote

Certain orchids are impossible to cultivate. My state's (MN) flower, the Queen Lady Slipper, has notoriously resisted cultivation thus far. It rarely germinates from seed, preferring to spread vegetatively. It's thought that the conditions necessary for it's germination are very specific to its natural environment - wetlands and bogs. It also takes a decade or more to mature and flower from seed, though it can live for up to 50 years. It's such a precarious and sensitive flower that it is a state crime to destroy or uproot them. I remember my grandparents had a small colony of them growing on their property by a lake up near Nisswa when I was a kid. They surrounded it with a locked fence, with a sign that read, "It is illegal by state law to pick a lady slipper flower. Anybody caught picking this flower will be shot and then prosecuted."

One thing to consider about mushrooms is that they represent a mere fraction of a much larger subterranean organism that exists in a balance with its host substrate. Some fungi are not picky about their substrate and are thus easier to cultivate. Others require a very specific substrate and growing conditions that are not currently possibly to replicate artificially.

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GeriatricHydralisk t1_jc1zrn3 wrote

This can be true of animals too - many species depend upon certain prey, micronutrients, temperatures, water parameters, etc. Others can be kept, but can't be induced to breed. Usually it's just lack of knowledge, but getting that knowledge requires a lot of trial and error and frustration.

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Baileyr820 t1_jc43ioo wrote

Well I know there are species that can be grown artificially but not commercially. For example, the western huckleberry. It thrives in high elevations in very specific conditions. Although you MAY be able to grow a single plant (with great difficulty) as far as I know they are really only naturally growing plants.

This may be a dumb question and not worded properly but are we able to artificially produce different elevation conditions?

Is there any way to recreate high elevations in a low elevated environment? For example, is there any way to grow a high elevation plant at low elevation?

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