Mushrooms are a fungus that we eat. They are packed with nutritional values, such as vitamins B, selenium, potassium, copper, and vitamin D (when exposed to the sun). Apart from “good for plant-based diets”, mushrooms grow in dark, cool, moist, and humid environment and decaying trees are their favorites to erect. Also, used as a medication, researchers are continuously looking for another benefit it can provide. Recently, they developed a solution where it can hopefully protect crops for farmers.
One of the most interesting developments in the field of biopesticides is the use of fungi. Mushrooms as a natural pesticide have been in practice for a while to test if they are beneficial for crops to grow healthy along with possessing less risk to useful insects.
To let crops grow, some insects play a very important role in enriching their nutritious values and some are like cancer to their habitats. The developed substance from earthstar could be used to kill the insects that attempt to feast on the crops. So-called SMART pesticides are anti-toxic, which can be a breath of fresh air in our increasingly toxic environment.
Pesticides are necessarily spread over fields for large-scale food production, however, they also have harmful effects on the natural world as well as on human health. The agriculture industry for its benefit disturbed the ecosystem of health-oriented cultivation. Many of the chemicals used in commercial pesticides, like ammonia, arsenic, benzene, chlorine, and many more are harmful if used ignorantly.
One of the fungi-based biopesticides, called MycoPesticide, will begin to sprout inside of the insect once it is eaten and will then feed on the creature until it dies, often with mushroom sprouts popping out of its head. It is also not harmful to bees, which has been a growing concern in relation to pesticides.