Exogenous substances promote the formation of Phallus dongsun primordia by remodeling the mycosphere microenvironment.

Exogenous substances, especially 60 mg/L ZnSO4·7H2O, promote Phallus dongsun mycelial growth and primordia formation by remodeling the mycosphere microenvironment.

• Why it matters: Understanding how exogenous substances influence macrofungal development can improve crop yields and resource utilization, but the mechanisms of metabolite-microbe interactions in the mycosphere are not well understood.
• What they did: The study used Phallus dongsun in plate and pot experiments combined with multi-omics analysis to examine how exogenous substances like ZnSO4·7H2O, MgSO4, TRIA, and VB6 affect growth, primordia formation, metabolite composition, and microbial communities.
• The result: Exogenous substances significantly altered mycosphere metabolite and microbial diversity, increased keystone taxa such as Paraburkholderia, and promoted P cycling, which together stimulated primordia formation and P uptake in P. dongsun.