Abstract
Mushrooms are a source of nutrition particularly in respect of proteins and vitamins. It has been rightly called “vegetable meat”. Apart from being potential protein and energy source, mushrooms are famous for their medicinal values. In addition to their fascination for the gourmet, they are nature’s most active agents in the disposal of forest’s waste materials. Not only in disposing timber, but also helps in converting dead plants into available food. They are efficient agents, fitting into the nutrient cycle of farms and forests. As they utilize agricultural by products and wastes as their substrate, mushroom cultivation is an eco-friendly activity. In a country like India where vegeterians dominate, every attempt should be made to popularize a vegetable protein source like mushroom. A study on the cultivation of oyster mushroom, Pleurotus florida was undertaken. It was found to grow on various solid wastes viz. paddy straw, rice husk, saw dust, water hyacinth and a mixture of all the selected substrates. The oyster mushroom cultivated on the paddy straw gives the maximum yield with high content of protein, carbohydrate and lipid.
Highlights
According to Chang (1991), “the mushroom is a macrofungus with distinctive fruiting body which can be either epigeous or hypogeous and large enough to be seen with naked eye and to be picked by hand.” Mushroom farms may be use as disposal sites for agricultural waste products
A minimum period of 16 days was taken by paddy straw for sporophore initiation followed by rice husk (18 days), mixed subsrate (20 days), water hyacinth (21days) and a maximum period of 23 days was recorded in saw dust substrate
The order of protein (%) of P.florida grown on different substrates is paddy straw (26.2%) > rice husk (25.0%)=Mixed substrate (25.0%) > water hyacinth (22.5%) > saw dust (20.0%)
Summary
According to Chang (1991), “the mushroom is a macrofungus with distinctive fruiting body which can be either epigeous or hypogeous and large enough to be seen with naked eye and to be picked by hand.” Mushroom farms may be use as disposal sites for agricultural waste products. Mushrooms are found to possess the two basic abilities of biodegradation and bioaccumulation for the bioremediation of wastes. Mushroom cultivation serves as the most efficient and economically viable biotechnology for the conversion of long cellulose waste materials into high quality protein food (Dike et al, 2011). The protein- extracting ability of oyster mushrooms makes them a very popular alternative energy source for dieting individuals (Shah, 2004). A study on the cultivation of Pleurotus florida was undertaken. It was cultivated on five selected solid wastes viz. Paddy straw, Rice husks, water hyacinth, Saw dust and a mixture of all the selected four substrates. The cultivation was carried out in polythene bags (containing 500gm paddy straw on dry weight basis per bag) using grain spawn as well as the nutritional contents like the protein, lipid and carbohydrate were estimated
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