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.

To investigate the effects of co-solvents on the morphology of nano-scale zein materials, zein solutions were electrospun with different co-solvent ratios of EtOH/H2O. Different zein solution concentrations were used to study the effects of the zein content on the electrospun materials. The resulting electrospun materials were all characterized using field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The diameters of the electrospun nanoparticles and nanofibers were found to increase when increasing the EtOH ratio at certain zein concentrations. Furthermore, increasing the zein content changed the morphology of the electrospun materials from nanoparticles to nanofibers.