A number of mycological media are available for the study of fungi. One can use the medium according to the type of work to be conducted. We have employed Pal sunflower seed medium to recover many fungi from soil, pigeon droppings, bat excreta, fruits, vegetables, saw dust, rice husk, sewage, water, air etc. If you wish, you can try out medium for your experiment.

We are working on pathogenic fungi that infect human and animals including birds since 1973. We did not use PDA or MEA to get pure culture. We used Sabouraud dextrose agar for most of the fungi. However, for the study of Cryptococcus neoformans, we developed sunflower seed agar (Pal medium) in 1980.Presently, Pal sunflower seed medium is used in microbiology and public health laboratories for rapid diagnosis, laboratory investigation, and sexual compatibility of Cryptococcus neoformans.

It really depends on the fungus. There is wide variety of media available, with each its own purpose. As a base standard media for most fungi PDA or MEA should work. PDA might even be too rich and you lose a bit of sporulation to vegetative growth. Both will grow basically anything that you put on them so addition of a antibiotic to limit bacterial growth is recommended.

Some reading material that might prove useful for your question: http://www.fungifun.org/docs/mushrooms/CULTURE%20MEDIA%20FOR%20FUNGI.pdf

Norman van Rhijn Considering pure cultures were prepared using either MEA or PDA, can the same DNA extraction protocol be used for both?

Archchana Ganeshalingam Absolutely, I can recommend a CTAB based DNA or based upon this protocol: Article Fast and Reliable PCR Amplification from Aspergillus fumigat...

During my work "A Study of Fungi from Stored Wheat Grains of Saugar (1961) I used Czapek's Agar, PDA, Malt Agar Medium and Malt Salt Agar to isolate fungi and purify them.

I am using PDA for my phytopathogenic fungi. for example Fusarium, in PDA they are sporulating. fungal colony grown in MEA showed slimmy and transparent so I prefer PDA rather than MEA.

A number of mycological media are available for the study of fungi. One can use the medium according to the type of work to be conducted. We have employed Pal sunflower seed medium to recover many fungi from soil, pigeon droppings, bat excreta, fruits, vegetables, saw dust, rice husk, sewage, water, air etc. If you wish, you can try out medium for your experiment.

It depends on isolates of interest, for morphological identification of some seed borne fungi (aspergilli) MEA gives better colony color.

Better is PDA as we used it in our research

I will recommend you use PDA if you are to choose between the two, it is the most commonly use growth media for fungi. However, you have to add an antibiotic such as chloramphenicol to inhibit the growth of bacteria.