Poria cocos is an edible and pharmaceutical mushroom with a long history of medicinal use in Korea. For the last 30 years, the domestic cultivated supply of Poria cocos has been unable to meet consumer demand, so Poria cocos is collected in mountainous areas and also imported from China. Thus, to increase the supply of Poria cocos, many artificial cultivation methods have been studied. In this study, Poria cocos is cultivated under different environmental conditions using plastic bags and the results compared. When cultivating Poria cocos at different temperatures (20, 25, 30 and 35oC) and using different numbers of plastic bag layers (1, 2), the most efficient cultivation conditions were a temperature of 25-30oC and 2 plastic bag layers. The fastest growth was at 25-30oC, and the Poria cocos exhibited no weight change when cultivated using layers of plastic bags (1, 2).

Zein/Poria cocos extract nanofibers were prepared based on the electrospinning of aqueous solutions with different Poria cocos extract concentrations (0, 5, 10, and 15 wt.%). The electrospinning parameters, including the polymer contents, voltage, and tip-to-collector distance (TCD), were optimized for the fabrication process. The resulting electrospun materials were all characterized using field-emission scanningelectron microscopy (FE-SEM). The diameters of the electrospun zein nanofibers were found to increase when increasing the zein concentration.