I am starting an edible mushroom research program, I have cloned many oysters and more from many places in NZ. I want mushroom growers to upload the progress here so I can track different ways of growing our mushrooms. People are highly interested in my cultures and this is all about to start. The research will be able to be seen by all on this site.
The big question and the problem I have is:
Is inaturalist a great place to upload all this data and photos?
Will it annoy scientists who are tracking fungi in the wild?
I feel this data will be important to understand the switch from home growers growing imported mushrooms to sending native spores out and the effect that will have on the environment. All the cultures are being sent to Landcare to store in the ICMP.
in general, iNat and the community are reluctant to touch on edibility, especially with mushrooms. In terms of tracking an agricultural system or similar, you can put the data into iNat, but it isn’t really set up for it. As long as you mark the fungi as captive, i don’t think it will annoy people, but it also may not be seen by very many people.
So in short, no iNat isn’t a great place to upload this data, but there may not be anywhere else that is great either.
i don’t see anything wrong with putting the data in the system, especially if it’s likely the spores will end up back in the environment. if you record the original sources of any additional mushroom lines, those of course would have a place here, too.
you can use observation fields in your observations to track the clones back to the originals. then if people start seeing more native species popping up near your clones then they might be able to trace things back to a source. i thnk that’s valuable information.
I am not asking them to touch edibility I am providing cultures to people who will grow I just want the scientists to be able to track the genetics. All the cultures will be DNA before this is nothing about ID.