Chemical Ingredients of Cordyceps militaris

Abstract

Medicinal mushrooms, including Cordyceps militaris, have received attention in Korea because of their biological activities. In the fruiting body and in corpus of C. militaris, the total free amino acid content was 69.32 mg/g and 14.03 mg/g, respectively. In the fruiting body, the most abundant amino acids were lysine, glutamic acid, proline and threonine. The fruiting body was rich in unsaturated fatty acids, which comprised about 70% of the total fatty acids. The most abundant unsaturated acid was linoleic acid. There were differences in adenosine and cordycepin contents between the fruiting body and the corpus. The adenosine concentration was 0.18% in the fruiting body and 0.06% in the corpus, and the cordycepin concentration was 0.97% in the fruiting body and 0.36% in the corpus.