Abstract
Despite the increased recognition of the nutritional value of the Oyster mushroom, coupled with its ability to tolerate a wide range of climatic conditions, its production is still at infancy stage with low adoption rate in Kenya. The low uptake could be attributed to the cost of spawns or lack of skills for spawns preparations coupled with poor knowledge on oyster mushroom consumption benefits. The objective of this study was to optimize Pleurotus ostreatus (Oyster mushroom) spawns production. To achieve the objective, the spawns propagation was optimized by varying the temperature level, sterilization time and culture media concentration in order to establish the feasible levels which minimized the days of mycelium full development using central composite designs. Based on the study findings, 26.29˚C, 17.36 minutes and 60.95 g/L of temperature level, sterilization time and culture media concentration levels respectively minimized the days to full coverage of mycelium in a petri dish. Central composite designs for controlling temperature, sterilization time and culture media concentration were recommended for spawns maximum production. A further research on multiple response optimizations aimed at achieving resistance to bacterial diseases and yield by varying the strain in the culture were recommended.
Highlights
Central Composite Design (CCD) is a common form of response surface methodology
The spawns propagation was optimized by varying the temperature level, sterilization time and culture media concentration in order to establish the feasible levels which minimized the days of mycelium full development using central composite designs
This study considered rotatable central composite design (RCCD) under which the value of α depends on the number of experimental runs in the factorial portion of the central composite design, such that α = ( f )4, where f is the square points in a central composite design, making the design rotatable
Summary
The CCD is composed of three design points: square or edge points in two level designs (±1), star points at ±α ; α ≥ 1 that take care of the quadratic effect and the third one is the centre points [2]. The square or cube points consist of 2k factorial design (±1, ±1, ..., ±1), where k is the number of independent variables in which the design can be replicated nf times. The star points consist of 2k units on the axis of each factor at a distance α, from the centre of the design [(±α, 0, ..., 0), (0, ±α, 0, ..., 0)], whose selection is based on the orthogonality and rotatability criterion, and takes one observation at each of the vector ±α ei can be replicated ns times, where ei is the i-th Euclidean unit vector and α > 0.
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