Current Trends in Natural Sciences Vol. 9, Issue 18, pp. 42-46, 2020 https://doi.org/10.47068/ctns.2020.v9i18.006 Current Trends in Natural Sciences (on-line) Current Trends in Natural Sciences (CD-Rom) ISSN: 2284-953X ISSN: 2284-9521 ISSN-L: 2284-9521 ISSN-L: 2284-9521 http://www.natsci.upit.ro *Corresponding author, E-mail address: melinda_tomescu@yahoo.com 42 INFLUENCE OF TEMPERATURE AND PH LEVEL ON MYCELIAL GROWTH IN LIQUID CULTURES OF CORDYCEPS MILITARIS MUSHROOM MYCELIUM Melinda Rózsa 1,* , Maria Apahidean 1 1 University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca, Romania Abstract Cordyceps militaris is an entomopathogenic fungus, belongs to the Ascomycetes class and has important pharmacological principles, the most important are polysaccharides and mannitol. Given that in most cases, mushrooms are grown on different substrates of solid consistency, and most supplements containing mycelium from the Cordyceps militaris mushroom are obtained by drying and shredding the mycelium, which has been grown on a solid substrate consisting of brown rice flour or other cereals, so that they very often contain more starch than active ingredients. In this paper we looked at the influence of temperature and pH level on the growth of the mycelium of this mushroom in liquid culture media. The development of liquid mycelium cultures was tested at temperatures between 20- 30 °C and at a pH level between 5-7. The highest amount of mycelium was obtained from samples raised at 26 °C and a pH level of 5.5. Keywords: Cordyceps militaris, medicinal mushroom, pH, temperature. 1. INTRODUCTION Medicinal mushrooms are a valuable source of biologically active principles such as polysaccharides, ergosterol, cordycepin and mannitol, which are used in traditional and modern medicine (Go et al., 2007). The Cordyceps militaris mushroom has been used in folk medicine in East Asia since antiquity, being used as a food with tonic and invigorating properties (Mizuno, 1999), in subtropical and temperate regions (Nag and Wang, 2005). The main bioactive component of medicinal interest of the Cordyceps militaris mushroom is represented by cordycepin (Cunningham et al., 1995), and the therapeutic and medicinal properties are represented by: anticancer activity (Shonkor et al., 2010), antioxidant activity (Wu et al., 2011), antiviral activity (Yuko et al., 2007), anti-fungal activity (Byung et al., 2009), antibacterial activity (Young et al., 2000), immunomodulatory agent for the treatment of immunological diseases (Shin et al., 2009; Rozsa et al., 2016 a). Collecting Cordiceps militaris mushrooms grown in natural conditions is very expensive, and their cordycepin content is much lower than the content of artificially grown mycelial biomass (Guo et al., 1998; Rozsa et al., 2016 b).