A Comparative Photographic Review on Higher Plants and Macro-Fungi: A Soil Restoration for Sustainable Production of Food and Energy

Abstract

The Kingdom of Plantae is considered the main source of human food, and includes several edible and medicinal plants, whereas mushrooms belong to the Kingdom of fungi. There are a lot of similar characteristics between mushrooms and higher plants, but there are also many differences among them, especially from the human health point of view. The absences of both chlorophyll content and the ability to form their own food are the main differences between mushrooms and higher plants. The main similar attributes found in both mushrooms and higher plants are represented in their nutritional and medicinal activities. The findings of this review have a number of practical implications. A lot of applications in different fields could be found also for both mushrooms and higher plants, especially in the bioenergy, biorefinery, soil restoration, and pharmaceutical fields, but this study is the first report on a comparative photographic review between them. An implication of the most important findings in this review is that both mushrooms and plants should be taken into account when integrated food and energy are needed. These findings will be of broad use to the scientific and biomedical communities. Further investigation and experimentation into the integration and production of food crops and mushrooms are strongly recommended under different environmental conditions, particularly climate change.

Plant Nutrition for Human Health: A Pictorial Review on Plant Bioactive Compounds for Sustainable Agriculture

“…Secondary metabolites can also be used as food additives, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics ingredients [85]. Enormous plants, mainly medicinal plants, that can produce bioactive secondary metabolites include Chinese medicinal herbs, as reported by El-Ramady et al [86] and in Tables 2 and 3. The production of bioactive plant secondary metabolites is common using in vitro technologies [87,88].…”

From Farm-to-Fork: A pictorial Mini Review on Nano-Farming of Vegetables

“…Nowadays, nano-agriculture has penetrated different branches of agriculture including plant nutrition (El-Ramady et al 2018;Rajput et al 2022), nano-enabled agriculture (Wu and Li 2022), nanofertilizers (Ibrahim and Hegab 2022;Shalaby et al 2022), nano-pesticides (Dangi andVerma 2021;Raj et al 2021;Singh et al 2022), nanosensors or nano-biosensors (Saravanakumar et al 2022), nano-food industries (Muthukrishnan 2022), nano-remediation of soil and water (Fei et al 2022), nanoparticles/nanomaterials for ameliorating stress on cultivated plants (Ghosh et al 2022), nanobiofortification for human health (El-Ramady et al 2021a, b), nano-farming (Behl et al 2022, and for sustainable agriculture (Hazarika et al 2022). Recently, many photographic reviews or minireviews have been published such as about smart farming (Fawzy and El-Ramady 2022), soil and humans , management of salt-affected soils (El-Ramady et al 2022b), a comparative review on higher plants and mushrooms (El-Ramady et al 2022c). Therefore, this mini-review discusses the possibility to produce healthy and sustainable food using the strategy of from farm-to-fork.…”