Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The ability of <jats:italic>Coriolus versicolor</jats:italic> medicinal mushroom to grow and accumulate selenium during submerged cultivation in a selenium‐fortified medium is examined in this paper. For selenium supplementation, commercial selenium yeast was used. Control, nonenriched sample and reference cultures cultivated in the medium enriched with commercial yeast <jats:italic>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</jats:italic> were also prepared. The mushroom demonstrated a high ability to accumulate selenium from the added source (around 970 and 1,300 µg/g of dry mycelium weight for samples enriched with selenium in a concentration of 10 and 20 mg Se/L, respectively). The addition of selenium significantly (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic> ≤ .05) increased the biomass yield, whereas the addition of nonenriched yeast had no significant (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic> ≤ .05) impact. Furthermore, regression analysis showed statistically significant (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic> ≤ .05) and positive correlations between the content of Se and Fe (<jats:italic>r</jats:italic> = .92), Se and Cu (<jats:italic>r</jats:italic> = .92), Se and Mn (<jats:italic>r</jats:italic> = .98), and Se and Sr (<jats:italic>r</jats:italic> = .96), suggesting that selenium incorporation was followed by incorporation of these elements, and led to mineral enrichment of the obtained mycelium. Methanol extracts prepared from mycelium biomass demonstrated a better inhibitory effect on Gram‐positive bacterial strains with minimal inhibitory concentrations between <0.3125 and 40 mg/ml. The obtained results showed that selenium yeast could be used for obtaining a potential novel food supplement: mushroom biomass with high selenium content and enhanced mineral composition.</jats:p>