Mold! Good God Y’all! What Is It Good For?
“Mold” is a general term used for fungi that
produce asexual spores. These fungi include
everything from mushrooms to athlete's foot.
Though molds have a variety of colors, including
white, red and brown, they can only be positively
identified with a microscope. The most famous
mold is the genus Penicillium, which is a bread
mold that has enormous medical benefits, but
one of the most common molds is Black Bread
Mold.
Like all living things mold on bread needs food,
water, the proper temperature and fresh air.
Molds get their food by extracellular digestion;
essentially Molds carry their stomachs on the
outside, producing enzymes that break down foodstuffs
in their environment into small molecules which
are then absorbed into its cells for energy.
Like the majority of creatures, molds are mostly
water, so that element is critical to their
survival. Molds cannot control their temperature,
so they must grow at whatever temperature their
environment is; for most molds the optimal temperature
is around 80 degrees Farenheit. Finally, molds
require plenty of fresh air and can be overcome
by bacteria growth in an environment without
it.
Most molds do need light at some point in their
life-cycle, such as spore production, but, but
unlike plants, which make their own food through
photosynthsis, molds do not need light for normal
growth. Intstead molds eat food that was produced
by or from plants using extracellular digestion.
The primary reason that molds grow in darkness
is that they can get dried out by sun or other
bright lights.
The common black bread mold is a conjugating
mold. It produces three kinds of long branche
filaments called hypahe. The stolon hyphae spread
over the surface of bread, the rhizoid hyphae
penetrate the bread to digest it and the sporangiophores
are upright hyphae that have spore-filled structures
at their tips that release asexual mitospores
(spores formed by mitosis) when mature.
Many kinds of preservatives are added to bread
to prevent or inhibit mold growth on bread.
Unless these preservatives are absent, mold
will not grow very well, if at all. White bread
is also resistant to the growth of bread mold
simply because it has so little nutritional
value.
Bread Storage Info
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