Journal of Plant Disease Sciences

Seven grain (pulses and cereals) flours were evaluated (each @ 5% of wet weight of substrate) as supplements to the wheat straw used for cultivation of the oyster mushroom Pleurotus florida. All the test supplements influenced the vegetative and reproductive growth phases, yield contributing traits and fresh fruiting body yield of P. florida, over untreated control. Pigeonpea, Chickpea, Pearlmillet and Sorghum grain flours recorded minimum days to spawn run (13–15 days), pinhead initiation (17–19 days) and development of matured fruiting bodies (20–22 days), as against 18, 21 and 24 days, respectively in untreated control. All the supplements enhanced the average number of pinheads and matured fruiting bodies/bed, average diameter of pileus and stipe and stipe length. There were about 24 to 32 and 6 to 30 percent increase, in per bed average number of pinheads and matured fruiting bodies, about 6 to 28 and 10 to 29 per cent increase in average diameter of pileus and stipe, respectively, and stipe length (6 to 27%); over untreated control. All the test supplements recorded higher fresh mushroom yield in the range of 1269.52 g to 1412.00 g/bed (each bed of 1.5 kg dry substrate) with biological efficacy in the range of 82.81 to 94.46 per cent, as against 1116.45 g/bed yield and 74.42 percent biological efficiency in untreated control. Thus, it can be concluded that supplementation of the basic substrate with the flour of pulse/cereal grains certainly improve the yield and yield contributing traits of Pleurotus florida.