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The Corroboree
MatthewWH

Aus Mycology Study

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Where the heck can you study mycology in Aus? Or online maybe? I’ve been looking for months with no luck.. I would love to get my PhD. Do I have to study Botany and major in mycology or something I wonder... I say it’s time for an online school of Mycology! :-)

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There's nowhere undergraduate in Australia. You have to do either a general biology degree or a botany degree and then specialise in honours and postgrad. Most of the basic biology, chemistry, ecology, genetics, etc. you do will be the same anyway. RMIT, Latrobe and Melbourne Uni (and probably other unis) all have some mycology stuff available post-grad.
If you don't want the piece of paper you can study here https://mycologos.world But honestly I think getting a science degree is worth while if you really want to be good at what you do.

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I studied mycology in forest science at Southern Cross. Mycology is extremely complicated by the amount of unidentified species, and its underground. https://www.australasianmycologicalsociety.com/

I recommend Jeff Lowenfels, TEAMING WITH FUNGI.

Buy some MYCOGOLD spores and you can see the small mycorrhizal mushies come up...

Did you know that mycorrhizal fungi were responsible for the evolution of ocean plants onto land?? 

 

cheers

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As already mentioned there is no mycology degree offered by any australian universities.  but if you look there are some good units around,

 

my recommendation is to focus on majoring in plant science and microbiology, and then specialise.  consider doing some genetics, and bioinformatics units, given that microscopy is now fairly old school as we progress towards using dna for identification.

 

University of Tasmania has some good units in mycology, and a fair few researchers doing mycology research there.

 

University of  Melbourne seems to also be a good place to study mycology.

 

I recall the sydney university also had some good courses going.

 

Really in therms of what to study you are only limited by your imagination and government funding.  and finding a good supervisor.  there are so many areas to study, ecological roles of fungi (this is a huge field), natural products and toxicology of fungi if you are interested in chemistry (also huge),  using fungi in remediation, as plant pathogens, soil fungi and the role of glomeraceae in agriculture.

 

plenty of opportunities if you are interested in just growing them. 

 

my advice is to learn fungi taxonomy as best you can, start cultivating them at home, and mastering cloning on agar and associated skills, see which aspect of mycology takes your interest and then look at a pathway through undergrad.

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