Often after collection of Fruiting bodies of Macrofungi, they began to decompose almost after couple of hours which make it extremely difficult to carry out further works such as spore print, isolation in to growth medium or to identify and take measurement etc.
What are the suitable procedures to preserve macrofungi sporocarp/ fruiting bodies for longer periods or to keep them fresh from collection to further inspection?
I come from a cooler climate, where we have about 24 hours to collect that sort of data before fungi begin to decay. You need to prioritize what's most important to you. A spore print can be initiated immediately, if you come prepared with little plastic boxes or Petri plates and filter paper; by the time you get back to your lab, you will already have the spore print. If you bring a small cooler with you, you can place pieces of the sporocarp in vials and keep them cool until you can isolate from the tissue. For measurements, I guess it depends on what you want to measure. Taking a picture next to a ruler is a time-honored way of getting macroscopic measurements. For microscopic measurements, you can always dehydrate the specimen for storage and rehydrate for measurements. I know people who carry jars of silica gel granules with them in order to rapidly dry specimens. Other people bring electric food dehydrators with them. You could also bring jars of 70% ethanol with you and preserve fungi in that (although you could not isolate cultures from the resulting killed sporocarp). In the herbarium I worked in, I saw all of these methods used.
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