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Cordyceps: A Highly Coveted Medicinal Mushroom

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Medicinal Plants and Fungi: Recent Advances in Research and Development

Part of the book series: Medicinal and Aromatic Plants of the World ((MAPW,volume 4))

Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has a long history of using plant, animal, and fungal materials for their medicinal values. One of the better known and by far the most expensive of the Oriental medicines is the family of fungal-insect pairings known as Cordyceps. Different Cordyceps species, most notably Ophiocordyceps sinensis, have a long history of use and have been found growing only from the head of a subterranean caterpillar above 3000 m altitude on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. Environmental and ecological factors have driven O. sinensis to the status of an endangered species, with annual harvests steadily declining while at the same time the worldwide demand is ever increasing. This has driven the prices for O. sinensis into an ever-increasing spiral over the last decade, with top-quality Cordyceps currently valued at more than one hundred thousand US dollars per kilogram (100,000 USD) in the major Chinese cities. Its value today is literally higher than the price of gold. Such fantastic prices are driving research into cultivating O. sinensis and other Cordyceps species with an eye to making them more affordable for commercial trade. Aloha Medicinals in the United States is currently the largest cultivator of Cordyceps in the world producing an estimated half of all the Cordyceps annually consumed, but in addition to cultivating this rare fungus for the pharmaceutical trade, they are also involved in researching new species of Cordyceps from around the world with similar or identical medicinal properties as the classic species, O. sinensis. Recently, Aloha Medicinals expeditions into the Tingo Maria Valley in Peru have found that this area has the greatest diversity of Cordyceps species of any known location. More than 1000 types of Cordyceps have been found in Tingo Maria Valley so far, the vast majority of which have yet to be described or named. Currently, biotechnology companies around the world are cultivating about a dozen different species of Cordyceps for use in the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical sectors. With the discovery of the incredible diversity of entomogenous fungi in Peru, many new candidate species are now being researched for their medicinal properties and the potential for cultivation, in an effort to commercialization as substitutes for increasingly rare O. sinensis. As research continues to prove the wide range of medicinal properties claimed for Cordyceps, the potential for developing new medicinal Cordyceps species to replace the rare and endangered wild-collected O. sinensis has great potential.

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Abbreviations

Cordyceps s.lat.:

Cordyceps sensu lato, meaning the broad group of insect-inhabiting fungi classed together as medicinally important species of fungi growing from the bodies of insects or occasionally truffles of the genus Elaphomyces.

TAR:

Tibetan Autonomous Region

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aloha Medicinals Inc., 2300 Arrowhead Dr, Carson City, NV, 89706, USA

    John Holliday

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Correspondence to John Holliday .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Chemistry, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichung, Taiwan

    Dinesh Chandra Agrawal

  2. Department of Applied Chemistry, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichung, Taiwan

    Hsin-Sheng Tsay

  3. Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    Lie-Fen Shyur

  4. Graduate Institute of Natural Products, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Yang-Chang Wu

  5. Department of Forestry, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan

    Sheng-Yang Wang

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Holliday, J. (2017). Cordyceps: A Highly Coveted Medicinal Mushroom. In: Agrawal, D., Tsay, HS., Shyur, LF., Wu, YC., Wang, SY. (eds) Medicinal Plants and Fungi: Recent Advances in Research and Development. Medicinal and Aromatic Plants of the World, vol 4. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5978-0_3

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