Lentinula edodes, shiitake, is a very important non-timber forest product that has been consumed more than 50,000 tons every year in Republic of Korea. However, the rapid increase of imported shiitake media from China has eroded domestic goods’ competitiveness. The domestic shiitake industry has faced this situation and has exerted great efforts to localizing shiitake spawn while encouraging the growers to utilize the domestic shiiake spawn. To address such a challenge, the “Golden Seed Project” was designed, with an objective to expand the market share of domestic spawn and to increase the exports of the domestic spawn within the period of 2013 to 2021. Under the project, two projects and five commissioned sub-projects have been conducted up to now, making some outcomes. Protections of two new varieties (Sanmaru 2-ho and Sanbaekhyang) of shiitake, whose cultivation periods were shortened up to 20 days compared to the existing ones, have been applied. Also, there have been three cases of technology transfers of new varieties to private enterprises, all of which contributed to disseminating domestic spawn. Besides, the research team has held public fairs and presentations of new shiitake varieties in a regular basis, while operating a total of 24 test beds consisting of log cultivation and sawdust bag cultivation. Meanwhile, other research projects have been done to identify fruit-body ingredients and the properties of molecular markers of mating types and to monitor diseases and pests. The second stage of “Golden Seed Project” aims to increase the share of domestic spawn in the domestic market, up to more than 70%.

• 가강현(국립산림과학원)