John Donoghue
Research Scientist
Northwest Mycological Consultants Inc.
702 NW 4th Street
Corvallis Oregon 97330 USAJohn Donoghue has been growing mushrooms in the PNW since 1976 and was among the first people in Oregon to produce shiitake. During his formative years with mushroom cultivation he had a 10,000-log shiitake farm in Corvallis that produced shiitake year round. At the same time he worked for many years in the wild mushroom business during the infancy of the wild-mushroom harvest in the Pacific Northwest. He now works with most of the specialty mushroom farms in the Northwest and elsewhere and continues to do applied research directed toward improvement of specialty mushroom production.
John started working at Northwest Mycological Consultants, Inc (NMC) in Corvallis, Oregon in 1986, soon after the company was formed. NMC has been instrumental in helping Oregon to become the 2nd highest shiitake producing state in the U.S. by providing reliable technical information, quality mushroom spawn and reliable supplies to the developing local industry. He co-authored the Shiitake Growers Handbook: the Art and Science of Mushroom Cultivation. (1988 Przybylowicz and Donoghue, Kendal-Hunt Publishing). This book is still used by growers around the world. John has traveled extensively visiting and working with mushroom farms and the mushroom science community internationally. He has had the privilege of presenting his and NMC's work at mycological conferences around the world. A more memorable time from these visits was coming across a more-than-life-sized picture of himself holding their Growers Handbook at the Museum of Mushroom Cultivation in the area of China where shiitake production began more than a thousand years ago.
John Donoghue did pioneering work on the influences of gas levels during incubation of shiitake as determined by the mushroom-cultivation bag and has developed and manufactured specialized bags for mushroom cultivation that are marketed around the world. NMC has developed a line of automated equipment for aseptic inoculation of sterilized substrates contained in bags, and this inoculation system is now used on mushroom farms worldwide.