For over four decades, an extraordinary and down-to-earth researcher in the scientific field has developed an indissoluble bond with edible fungi, affectionately known as the “Mushroom Academician” by farmer friends. This stalwart in the science of edible fungi in China and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering is Professor Li Yu from Jilin Agricultural University. Professor Li Yu has dedicated his life to mycological research. Year after year, he has ventured deep into the mountains and farmlands, leading numerous impoverished households toward the path of prosperity, exemplifying the spirit of a pioneer.
Professor Li Yu has consistently pursued the study of edible fungi with diligence, and his hard work has significantly advanced China’s edible fungi industry and mycology. Even in his old age, he tirelessly travels across the country, with a determination to rejuvenate the nation through science and technology, providing strong scientific and technological support for rural revitalization.
Professor Li Yu’s connection with edible fungi began in 1978 when the national college entrance examination was reinstated, and he was admitted as a master’s degree candidate at Jilin Agricultural University, where he was mentored by the renowned mycologist Professor Zhou Zonghuang. Zhou not only opened the door to Li Yu’s research in edible fungi but also taught him how to focus on scientific research, prompting Li Yu to begin his in-depth study of slime molds. At that time, China’s research in mycology was relatively underdeveloped, with hundreds of slime molds yet to be named by Chinese scholars. Faced with his mentor’s dying entrustment, Li Yu made a firm promise never to fail his teacher’s expectations.
After undertaking this great responsibility and staying on as a faculty member, Professor Li Yu poured all his enthusiasm and energy into the research of mycological science and edible fungi engineering technology. In the quest to identify the country’s mycological resources, he led his students in visits across the country, collecting, preserving, and researching various mycological resources, establishing a high-standard mycological specimen museum and germplasm resource bank, containing 61,000 precious specimens and strains, laying a solid foundation for China’s fundamental research in mycology.
Professor Li Yu is the first person in China to name new species of slime molds. He is also the country’s first scholar to engage in systematic classification research of slime molds at the genus, family, and order levels. He has discovered and collected more than 400 types of slime molds, almost two-thirds of the known species in the world. His team also produced the majority of slime mold molecular biology samples globally.
After more than four decades of a scientific research career, Li Yu has compiled his knowledge and significant achievements into publications such as “Mucorales of China”, “Fungi of China – Shiitake Volume”, and “Fungi of China – Slime Molds Volume”. The journal “Mycological Research” he established has also become a core journal in the field. Through the continuous efforts of Professor Li Yu and many colleagues, China’s mycological research has reached the international forefront, with increasing influence.
Professor Li Yu not only focuses on the development of the discipline itself but also emphasizes the cultivation of successors to ensure sustainable research in the field. He has exemplified the concept of serving the country through science and technology with his actions. Since 1978, China’s edible fungi production was only 57,000 tons. After 40 years of rapid development, by 2018, the output had surged to 40 million tons, an approximate 700-fold increase, creating a global miracle in the growth of the edible fungi industry.
China firmly holds the world’s leading position in the production of edible mushrooms, contributing about 80% of the global output and is hailed as a major edible mushroom-producing country.
Despite this status, compared to many developed countries and nations that started research earlier, there’s still much room for improvement in the field of edible mushrooms for China. To transition from a country of substantial production to a powerful one in edible mushrooms, China urgently needs a new generation of scientific researchers to undertake the task of innovation.
To drive this transformation, Mr. Li Yu founded two secondary disciplines, Mycology and Mushroom Crops, and established the first undergraduate program in Applied Biological Sciences (Mycology direction) in the country. In 2019, the program he led officially entered the National Regular Higher Education Undergraduate Programs Catalogue, marking the establishment of the first undergraduate Mycology program in China.
Li Yu holds strict academic research standards, he encourages students to practice deeply at the grassroots level, and strike the key issues. He often emphasizes that meticulous cultivation, careful planting, and field verification can prove one’s true ability.
Over the past 30 years, the team led by Li Yu has grown into the largest mycology research team in the country, breeding more than 50 new varieties, 6 of which have received national approval. In addition, he has trained hundreds of masters and doctoral students, who play an important role in the edible mushroom industry.
As a pragmatic scientist, Li Yu is adept at helping farmers find new ways to make money. In Huangsongdian Town, Jiaohe City, Jilin Province, Li Yu effectively leveraged the “Five Non-Competes” advantage of fungal crops to transform the local disadvantages due to high altitude and short frost-free periods.
His efforts successfully introduced the unique Auricularia auricula between forests to the fields, leading and demonstrating to the local farmers how to grow black fungus, changing the originally barren appearance of Huangsongdian Town, making it a nationally known hometown of black fungus, and helping the local farmers to get rid of poverty and become wealthy.
Li Yu’s concern lies not only in Huangsongdian Town, but he also advocates promoting the cultivation of edible mushrooms nationwide, proposing the development strategies of “moving mushrooms south to the north” and “expanding the northern fungus to the south.” Currently, more than 400 national-level poverty-stricken counties regard edible mushroom cultivation as a key point for poverty alleviation, among which, Zhashui County in Shaanxi Province is a typical success story.
In 2017, Li Yu brought five varieties of black fungus that he had independently selected and bred into Zhashui County, initiating a technology-oriented poverty alleviation initiative. He personally taught the local agricultural technicians and farmers, and directly guided them to master the technology of cultivating black fungus, working with the farmers to promote the scaled development of the edible mushroom industry. After two years of effort, Zhashui County successfully achieved its goal of shedding poverty.
Since 2012, when China fully started its poverty alleviation efforts, Li Yu and his team have gone deep into more than forty poverty-stricken areas across the country, establishing thirty-one edible fungus technology promotion bases and supporting twenty-two leading edible fungus enterprises. They also assisted more than eight hundred villages, enabling tens of thousands of impoverished families to lift themselves out of poverty through the cultivation of edible mushrooms. By 2021, Li Yu was honored with the title of “National Model of Poverty Alleviation” for his outstanding contributions.
Despite having achieved significant accomplishments, Li Yu has not stopped in his tracks. Upholding the ideal of serving the country through science and technology, he states, “Our country’s edible mushroom industry needs to become stronger. We should not be content with our current achievements but should continue to innovate, constantly replacing the old with the new, and make more contributions to the field of scientific research.”
