World wide mushroom productions have been increased to 10-20% and more various mushrooms have been attempted to cultivate. Similar trends were also observed in Korea. More diverse mushroom varieties such as Pleurotus eryngii, Hericium erinaceus and Agrocybe aegerita have been attempted to cultivate in larger areas. In these days, 235 varieties of 33 different mushroom species have been cultivated. However only 50 varieties were protected by the law. Since 1960s, mushroom industry had been considered as one of the major export industries in Korea and mushroom production has been rapidly increased. In 2008, total mushroom production was about 198,209 ton, which were about 800 billion won (one trillion won if include mushroom factory products). Major cultivated species are Pleurotus ostreatus, P. eryngii, Flammulina velutipes, Lentinula edodes and Agaricus bisporus, which cover 90% of total production. We believed that the protection of mushroom vavarieties by the law is one of the main problems to be solved. Also, more studies to develop better mushroom production methods with low cost and improve the distribution structures are certainly required. In these days, the export of mushroom has been increased in Korea. We imported more mushrooms than exported for last 4 years, however, it has been changed that export is getting bigger in these days. Because we developed the liquid spawning and automatic cultivation systems, which lead the reduction of mushroom production cost and resulted in the increasement of export. If we develop better post-harvest system, it is certain that the mushroom export should be more important in the future. As an alternative way, some Korean companies are planning to build the plants in main export countries. Mushroom industry has promising future because mushroom is good for your health.

Background : Bitter gourd (Momordica charantia) is a vegetable with pantropical distribution and contains the active ingredient, such as momordicine and charantin. Moreover, bitter gourd has been reported to exhibit antidiabetic, anticancer, cardiovascular-protective and antioxidant effects. But, the distinctive bitter taste of bitter gourd was not suitable for food preference. This study was conducted to evaluate the improvement effects of bitter taste of bitter gourd with natural fermentation and roasting process. Methods and Results : Bitter gourd fruits were obtained from Headeulnyeokae Co., Ltd.(Gang-Jin 59253, Repubilc Korea). Fruits of bitter gourd were prepared by natural fermentation process for 4h at 25℃. After natural fermentation, the fruits were dried in hot-air dryer for 15h at 49-55℃. The dried fruits were roasted in 500 g batches at 120℃ for 10 min in the electric rotisserie oven. After roasting, fruit pieces were extracted with hot water and cold water. One of them was cool-type, and the other was hot-type bitter gourd tea. In the sensory evaluation, hot tea and cold tea showed the high scores on color, flavor and overall acceptability. Conclusion : These mean that roasted bitter gourd had less bitter, and it could be utilized widely as drink and food material.

A new vegetable peanut variety “Bakjung(Arachis hypogaea L.)” was developed from the cross between Shindaekwang and Suwon94 at the Honam Agricultural Research Institute and Yongnam Agricultural Research Institute, National Institute of Crop Science in 200