IMPACT OF DIFFERENT CASING MATERIALS FOR PRODUCTION OF MILKY MUSHROOM (CALOCYBE INDICA)

Abstract

Milky mushroom (Calocybe indica) is an indigenous tropical edible mushroom becoming popular among people these days during summer and rainy season. This experiment was conducted in mushroom cultivation laboratory, Dept. of Agricultural Sci., &RD, Loyola Academy Degree and PG College Hyderabad, India in completely randomized design (CRD) replicated thrice. The temperature of Hyderabad ranges from 27 to 34 0 C with Relative humidity (RH) ranging from 70-85% and continued by gentle spraying of water over cemented floor 2-3 times during day time. The morphological characters i.e. pileus diameter (cm), average number of pinheads, length of stalk (cm), biological efficiency (%) and yield (g) were recorded. Paddy substrate is used for growing milky mushroom with different casing materials viz., T1 (cocopeat), T2 (cocopeat+ vermicompost), T3 (FYM), T4 (vermicompost), T5 (sandy loam soil), T6 (FYM+ sandy loam soil) and T7 (Vermicompost + sandy loam soil) were tested. The result of the experiment revealed that, out of seven different casing material evaluated T6(FYM + sandy loam soil gave significantly highest yield (1428g), average number of Pinheads(41.66), length of stalk(7.76cm), Pileus Diameter (7.78cm), with early first harvest(33days) and biological efficiency (142.36%) ,followed by T7 (Vermicompost + sandy loam soil) compared to other treatments. Lowest values were observed in T5 (sandy loam soil).This study confirms the suitability of locally available wild strain APK2 which can be recommended for cultivation by mushroom growers by using paddy straw as substrate with FYM +Sandy soil as a casing material for achieving higher yield.