Regional Cultivation Forms of Hericium erinaceus Across China's Climatic Zones: A Scoping Review and Analytical Lens for Climate-Adaptive Production

The cultivation of Hericium erinaceus in China accounts for about 85% of the global supply. Its decentralized production systems have developed across diverse climate zones, leading to distinct, location-specific practices recorded in local technical standards. This scoping review synthesizes these empirical protocols from five agro-climatic regions. It illustrates how adaptive strategies such as cold-tolerant strains in the northeast and market-driven precision in the subtropics are associated with yield stability. These practices reflect two interconnected forms of diversity. One is the diversity of cultivation systems themselves, from forest-based methods to industrial-scale production systems. The other is the diversity of locally adapted strains developed for specific environments. We use the Intelligent Germplasm-Cultivation-Processing-Market (GCPM) Integration framework to connect local practices with broader questions of systemic resilience. The evidence draws on field-validated standards, not controlled experiments, reflecting the current state of research. This work presents China's practical knowledge as a reference for designing context-sensitive, climate-resilient cultivation systems elsewhere, suggesting that resilience may depend more on intelligent adaptation to local conditions than on one-size-fits-all solutions.