Mycoforestry in Sicily: a proposal to enhance the multifunctionality of forests

Mycoforestry is forestry that aims to build on traditional rules to encourage forest ecosystem resilience while creating optimal conditions for fungal communities. Main goals of mycoforestry are: preservation of native forests, recovery and recycling of woodland debris, enhancement of replanted trees, strengthening sustainability of ecosystems, economic diversity. There is a large variety of fungi living in forests, each of which has a specific and complementary relationship to the diversity of native species, the ages of trees, the presence of dead trees or rich forest litter, etc. Fungi are the main responsible of wood decomposition and thus carbon and nutrient cycling, and they also form mycorrhizas in associations with trees and shrubs. The “mycosilviculture” is considered a global and profitable type of silviculture. Developing adapted forest management practices appears to be means to improve production of prized edible ECM mushrooms such as Boletus and Tuber species and saprotrophic fungi. The first principle for the creation of a mycoforestry system is to utilize native fungal species (i.e. Pleurotus, Ganoderma, Hericium species). Mycoforest technology is a new application to inoculate wild edible and medicinal mushrooms directly in forests. In particular, this technology is able to introduce edible/ medicinal mushrooms with high market value directly in forests with the aim to obtain a secondary crop to forests, besides timber. It can be used by private and public enterprises and local administrators interested in developing a wild mushroom harvest industry, to obtain an economic profit from forests or in relation with rural development in forest areas.