Abstract
A young and fresh matsutake mushroom of pH 6.5 soon began to corrupt with the lowering of pH to the minimum of 5.7, then turned to alkaline as the putrefaction proceeded.
Among the water soluble components in the mushroom, total nitrogen, aminonitrogen, nonprotein-nitrogen increased in quantity at the early stage of putrefaction, but they soon diminished and disappeared gradually. The amount of protein-nitrogen, however, showed a clear contrast with them.
The author considered that the young and fresh matsutake mushroom had especially low pH, and was ready to suffer from the autolysis. The rapidly increasing free amino-acids seemed to accelerate the decarboxylation activities.
