05/03/2022
Cordyceps militaris is a potential harbour of bio-metabolites for herbal drugs and evidences are
available about its applications for revitalization of various systems of the body from ancient
times. Amongst all the species, C. militaris is considered as the oldest source of some useful
chemical constituents. Besides their popular applications for tonic medicine by the all stairs of
the community, the constituents of C. militaris are now used extensively in modern systems of
medicine. The current survey records the mysterious potentials of C. militaris are boosting up
the present herbal treatments, as well as gearing up the green pharmacy revolution, in order to
create a friendly environment with reasonable safety. Evidence showed that the active
principles of C. militaris are beneficial to act as pro-sexual, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant/
anti-aging, anti-tumour/anti-cancer/anti-leukemic, anti-proliferative, anti-metastatic,
immunomodulatory, anti-microbial, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-protozoal,
insecticidal, larvicidal, anti-fibrotic, steroidogenic, hypoglacaemic, hypolipidaemic, anti-
angiogenetic, anti-diabetic, anti-HIV, anti-malarial, anti-fatigue, neuroprotective, liver-
protective, reno-protective as well as pneumo-protective, let alone their other synergistic
activities, which let it be marketable in the western countries as over-the-counter medicine. A
number of culture techniques for this mushroom have been noticed, for example, storage/stock
culture, pre-culture, popular/indigenous culture (spawn culture, husked rice culture and saw
dust culture) and, special/laboratory culture (shaking culture, submerged culture, surface
liquid culture and continuous/repeated batch culture). The prospects for herbal biotechnology
regarding drug discovery using C. militaris delivering what it has promised are high, as the
technology is now extremely more powerful than before. This study chiefly highlights the
medicinal uses of the mushroom C. militaris including its culture techniques, also aiming to
draw sufficient attention of the researchers to the frontier research needs in this context.
