A simple and cost-effective method for quantifying cyanide in the fruiting bodies and cultured mycelia of mushrooms using alkaline-SDS extraction and Conway diffusion.

This study describes a simple, cost-effective method for cyanide quantification in mushrooms. This involves an alkaline/SDS extraction producer to disrupt the cell wall while stabilizing volatile hydrogen cyanide as the cyanide ion (CN-) under alkaline conditions, which is subsequently recovered using Conway diffusion and quantified via pyridine-pyrazolone colorimetric analysis. This method demonstrated high sensitivity, with a limit of detection of 1.36 μg/g and limit of quantification of 4.82 μg/g. The spike recovery tests yielded an average recovery of 66-84 % (n = 9) at 10 μg/g CN- and a high recovery of 89-118 % (n = 10) at 100 μg/g CN-, demonstrating the accuracy and reproducibility of this method over a wide concentration range. This method was successfully applied to commercial fruiting bodies and cultured mycelia of Grifola frondosa and Pleurotus eryngii, revealing that cyanide content was influenced by storage conditions, incubation period, and species-specific metabolic characteristics.