Micro- and macro-scale measurement of fungal growth under various temperature and humidity conditions

Abstract

The overarching objective of this study was to develop a numerical model based on sigmoid type functions that reproduce fungal proliferation and colony formation by taking into account the influence of temperature and atmospheric moisture (water content) conditions for various fungi. Toward this end, this paper provides the results of fundamental experiments that measured the time responses of fungal mycelium. length and colony size on culture media under various environmental conditions. The basis of this experiment was to make a suspension that strictly controlled the density of spores and to perform both mycelium growth experiments on glass plate (micro-scale experiment) and colony formation experiments on culture media (macro-scale experiment) with the same slurry of fungal spores. This study focused on the effects of temperature and humidity on fungal growth and especially the mycelium length was measured directly using the digital image data taken with a microscope every 24 hours. Clear humidity- and temperature-dependence of fungal growth was confirmed in these experiments.